Marie Quigley: Hello and welcome to empower worlds the coaching and leadership. Podcast as you know, my name is Marie Quigley, and I'm delighted to be with our lovely guest this afternoon, this beautiful sunny afternoon, where I am in the world to introduce you to Sarah Short. Hello, Sarah!

Sarah Short: Hello, Marie! Nice to be here.

Marie Quigley: Great to be with you, too, so I could talk about your work, Sarah, but I always think it's much more authentic if it's coming from you, so please introduce yourself to our listeners, and tell them who you are and what you do.

Sarah Short: Okay, thank you very much. So Hello, everyone. I'm Sarah Short, and I am the founder and one of the mentors with the coaching revolution, and we turn qualified coaches into well paid professionals by teaching them comfortable, effective, and ethical client acquisition processes. Will be 8 in September. So I've been doing this for quite some time, and the reason that we even start, I say we. Originally there were 3 of us that started the coaching revolution, and very sadly one of them developed a brain tumor and died like very quickly after we started. And at that point we sort of fragmented, and I ended up staying with the coaching revolution. It's now mine, and all of my books have been dedicated to the lovely Hank, who is sadly no longer with us. What got us motivated to start the coaching revolution is that I came across a statistic that said that 82% of coaching businesses will fail in their 1st 2 years. And I thought, Well, that's really odd. What? What's so special about 2 years. And and in my head, what I thought was happening is that coaches were setting up their businesses, and everything was going swimmingly. And then around the 2223 month mark. The whole lot was tumbling down like a Jenga tower, and I couldn't work out. Why? Why, 2 years! What was, anyway? Turns out that's absolute nonsense. It's a complete red herring, because the 2 years part is actually, that's as long as coaches can sustain trying everything they can think of to find clients, and they reach the 2 year, mark. And obviously it's an average. But you know, around that mark they lose. They lose the motivation, the energy, the impetus they run out of money they run out of will to live like, you know. Why isn't this working? And at that point they often decide that the coaching profession is saturated, and that this is not for them, and and they leave us, and they get, you know, going forward. They might scratch their coaching itch, as it were, in work or with their family and friends, but they never get to be the fabulous coaches that they could have been. because marketing and client acquisition skills are not intuitive. and the things that are suggested to us to try by our coach training organizations and the things that we often try as non marketers to build our coaching businesses, almost without exception, are casting our net wide. and the really counterintuitive thing about marketing is that it is incredibly focused, and I can go as far as to say that if it isn't focused it isn't marketing. It's just splashing around trying to help people understand what you do. And as a provider of professional services. Coaches have a real problem that no other professional service provider has. And that problem has 2 parts number one. People don't know what we do and number 2. They think they know and they're wrong. And if you think about it, lawyer, architect, accountant, therapist, psychotherapist, all of those people. People know what they do and what that means is, they know when they need the services of them, those professionals. And with coaching that's usually not the case. Now I know there is a a slim group of people who tend to sit at the top of like the upper echelons of corporate or or public sector sit at the top of the the ladder, as it were, who absolutely do know what our kind of coaching is, but they are small in number, and the rest of the world has no idea what we do and what that means is, they have no idea. When a coach could be the answer to the problem that they have. And so if you have that on kind of one side on the other side, you've got a coach who in most cases is really really bad at describing what coaching is. You know, we get very vague and start to describe the coaching process, because, you know I will always joke with people and say, Who's have this hands up. If you have this conversation, somebody says, What do you do? And you say I'm a coach, and they go really. What do you coach on and we go? No, no, no, not that kind of coach, and they go. Oh. and then we start to say things. You know. I ask really good questions, and I'm not just listening to what you're saying. I'm listening to what you're not saying, and I'm watching your body language and what they're hearing is okay. So you talk, you talk to people. and and you want me to pay how much to have a conversation with you when I could have that conversation with my wife. My husband, my, you know best friend, my daughter. Why on earth would I pay money to you to have a conversation? And coaches aren't actually that good at explaining why the professional fee that they're charging, or that they want to charge is absolutely worth every single red cent of that sum. But if you are not able to articulate the value of the service you provide, which the vast majority of coaches are not. then people won't spend. Well, they won't spend money with you, let alone sums of money with you. And so in September 2017, I set off to change that. and that's what I've been doing ever since.

Marie Quigley: Well, look, I can absolutely see your passion and commitment and the energy that is obviously behind the coaching revolution. Sarah, could you step back a bit, because one of the things I always say to coaches is when they're looking, doing their due. don't. and searching for coaching programs is make sure the trainers have a thriving, coaching practice. Make sure they are really working in the field of coaching, and have built their practice. So understand some of the things you're going through. So if we look at you, how did you come to this world of marketing? What's your background.

Sarah Short: Okay? So I'm not. I'm not a qualified marketer. I took a degree in performing arts that you didn't see that coming, did you? It's a bit random, and so I took a degree in performing arts, and sort of didn't really do very much with that in my twenties. But when I had my daughters I took 7 years off work, and when I went back to work I'd been working in it so 7 years is a very long time in it, and what that meant was that the world had turned very quickly, and and I had no motivation at all to to go back to kind of catch up on it. And my then husband, now ex-husband said to me, Look, look! I found this thing, this children's drama, school franchise. Why don't you talk to them so long? Story short, I owned a a franchise of a drama school in Cumbria, in the Lake District, and grew it very quickly from no clients at all to. We were teaching a thousand children a week right across the county. 9 teachers took me a couple of years to do that, and then I was invited to go and open a branch of this drama school in Botswana. So I went, my husband and I and my daughters went to Botswana, and I did the same thing again there, and I didn't grow anywhere near as quickly, though it was a completely different experience wonderful. wonderful experience. But it was very different. And then, very sadly. and my marriage broke down, and my daughters and I came back to the Uk. And we arrived on the 3rd of December 2,008, and it had been 40 degrees in Gaborone, and it was minus 6 in London, and it was dark and cold. and I stayed with a close friend of mine for quite a number of weeks, while I sort of got my acting gear, as it were. and in about February of 2,009 she said to me. she said, you're really worrying me, Sarah. she said. You're normally, nauseatingly optimistic. She actually said that, she said, and right now you are a complete misery. and you make him feel worried. I think you should speak to a life coach. and I said, What's a life coach now? Fortunately the person that she knew was an Icf. Coach, and so 3 sessions in with this coach. And I was like. this is incredible. And I could absolutely say, You know, I process really quickly, you know, for me 3 sessions was like, I was like, this is amazing. This is transformational stuff, this is world changing. And I went and took my 1st coaching qualification. Now, I didn't actually start to build my coaching practices until 2013 ended up living back in Cumbria, and I started building my coaching practice, which was a combination like apparently according to the last Icf global study. It was a portfolio business. I did some training and some teaching and and some coaching and some mentoring around building small business, and I became aware over the next few years that the people that I trained with hadn't gone on to build a coaching business like they said they wanted to. They'd all won by literally all, one by one sort of floated back into what they were doing before, even though when we took our qualification. They were saying that they, you know, that they wanted out because they weren't enjoying this, and they just sort of floated back into it. And I was like. why has that happened? And when I spoke to some of them because you you stay in close, even if you don't speak for ages, you, you have a close relationship to the people you did. Yeah, yeah. basic coach training with, don't you? And I was like, what? What? Oh, there's just no work out there. There's just no work at that now. A couple of them have kind of gone to the platforms, and they that was a different thing back. Then there was, you know, good work available. If if you could register, and and you know, get work from bound by the platforms, I mean better up Ezra Lyra, coach up, etc. But the ones who hadn't gone the associate route had just sort of fizzled out.

Marie Quigley: And then I found that statistic.

Sarah Short: And I hadn't had that problem. I built my coaching business. But then. because I'd run this drama school and and my role as the principal of a drama school. Oh, by the way, between 2,009 and 2013, I'd also opened and run an English language school, so I'd been principal of an English language school on the South coast as well, and so my career up until 2017 had been about education and and sales and marketing. It had been articulating the value of what I did, whether that be running a drama school, or running an English language school, it had been articulating that value to very specific groups of people. So I understood that my focused, I understood that you can only market to a specific group, not to everyone, because if you try to market to everybody, literally, nobody hears you, you just disappear into the noise. And so when I'd started my coaching business, I knew exactly who I wanted to work with, and I knew what to say to help them understand why they should work with me. So you know, small business owners. I I was very specifically women with small businesses who were had started their businesses because they wanted to not go back to work after they'd have their children, and they wanted to be able to contribute meaningfully to the family financial pot without going back to work for somebody else. They wanted the flexibility of working for themselves. So I knew exactly who I wanted to work with. and so a lot of the places that I would find clients would be things like business, networking events, and I would go to these events, and there would be, as there are always 3 or 4 other coaches, and they'd say, Oh, I'm a coach and and you know I can help you reach your goals and overcome limiting beliefs and mental barriers, and I can get your team singing from the same hymn sheet, and and everybody would just look at them blankly, because Number one, nobody has a goal number 2. You don't know. You've got a limiting belief until the instant that you realize that that thing that you thought was simply the truth is a limiting belief, you know, so telling somebody that you can help them remove their limiting beliefs when they know they don't have any. It. It's not a useful way of describing coaching. We know what it means.

Marie Quigley: It's not language for muggles, is it? It's.

Sarah Short: Absolutely.

Marie Quigley: Language for coaches.

Sarah Short: Yes, it I call it coach. Speak, coach, speak is jargon. and and what we need to be able to do is client. Speak, and you know people go well. How do I do that? Well, the thing about client speak is that every single different kind of client has their own language and jargon, etc. And so I'd kind of watch these coaches, and and they all sort of started to make sense. I'm looking at these coaches. I'm talking to my coaches from my training cohort of saying, Oh, well, you know, I went here, there, and every, and I'm looking and thinking you don't know how to articulate the value of coaching. I can help you with that. And when we started, you know we there were 3 of us like, I say, in the very beginning, just for the 1st 12 months, and we each had coaching practices that were thriving, and we worked in very different sectors. I worked with my women with small businesses, and Hank worked in the public sector, and Paul, the other chap worked in tech very specifically, tech businesses that were run by the owner so tended to be before they got much above 20 million pounds turnover, they would still be owner run bigger than that. He wasn't really interested because he liked working with the whole team. So we knew exactly who we were working with. And when we looked around we realized that other coaches didn't have anywhere near that level of clarity, and without knowing who you're talking to, you don't know where you should be, and you don't know what you should say. and so we thought we'd have. Maybe I don't know 3 or 4 people a year coaches a year that we might help each, perhaps, if we and that's not what happened at all. And then, like, I say, very sadly, Hank Hank died, and we sort of went in our own directions, Paul and I. And then, about 4 years ago, 3 or 4, maybe even 5 years ago, can't quite remember when I decided to get our programs Icf accredited now and again. This is, if you think about this from my perspective rather than from the perspective of a coach listening to this, podcast so from my perspective. I work with qualified coaches. Now, when I say qualified coaches, what do I mean? I mean somebody with an Icf credential or an emcc credential, or an A/C. Credential, or one of the equivalent bodies around the world, or they might have a master's in coaching, or even a Phd. In coaching what I don't work with is the people who've done 27 quid on Udemy training course. Now, the reason for that is that is that what we teach is very effective, and I don't want to be responsible for the proliferation of lousy coaching. And you know I've had people challenge me on that and say, Well, how do you know that that's lousy coaching? And obviously I don't. But what I do know is that over the years people have hopped into my diary and said, Oh, look! You know I'm not. I've not even done any training yet, but I I've seen you on Linkedin, and I know you know about this. Is this some way you'd recommend for me to get trained as a coach, and they'll they tended to say to me, because I've been coaching informally for decades, and I'd like to, you know, formalize. Now, I reckon there must have been 40 over the years, and I followed up every single one, and without exception they all said I wasn't coaching. I was mentoring. I thought it was coaching, but it wasn't. And what that tells me is, if you haven't done what I call a proper coaching course. then you are not our kind of coach. and if you have done, if we just kind of look at Icf, so if you've done an Icf course, then you are taught that you can coach anyone, because, of course, you can. If they sit down in front of you. You can coach anyone, and so if we, I'm kind of jumping around here. But I'm hoping there's a path that makes sense through it. So if we think about a financially viable coaching business. So a business that's covering your financial bases and leaving you with some to have a nice life to that business has 2 completely separate skill sets and if you imagine, like an old fashioned weighing scale. so on one side of the scale, we have our delivery skills. And that's where our coaching qualifications sit. And it's also where every practitioner certificate, facilitation, certificate personality, profiling every single tool or skill that we have that we can whip out of our toolbox when we are delivering the thing that we do. They all sit on that one side of our skills scales and none of them is a client acquisition tool. They are delivery tools. Now, on the other side of this scale sit the skills that we need to create the opportunities to do that delivery. And those skills are marketing and sales skills. And that's where the coaching revolution sits. Yeah, we have.

Marie Quigley: I'm going to stop here. Remember you said I can.

Sarah Short: Yes, interrupt to one.

Marie Quigley: Brilliant clarification of that lovely metaphor. And I'm also reflecting your energy. your clarity, the fact that you've set up a number of businesses same as myself. That requires a mindset that is different, as you've described from doing the coaching. So you already had that mindset, Sarah. I recognize that in myself, too. There are coaches who have not innately got that mindset because you just said yourself you weren't trained as a marketer. It came as an innate part of you.

Sarah Short: I'm very reluctant to say that marketing is innate. It is a skill that can be learned.

Marie Quigley: Right.

Sarah Short: Mindset can also be learned. And I know this because we've been teaching it for 8 years, and we have a great deal of success. But I can tell you that one of the biggest transformations of the coaches that we work with they'll say I mean, several of them have said to me. Many of them have said to me, I did not anticipate that working with the coaching revolution would be such a massive personal development journey. I thought it was professional development. I did not see that I would not be the same person at the end as I was at the beginning, and the biggest transition is that employee to entrepreneur now? Not, you know. Some people go. Oh, I hate the word entrepreneur. Okay. Self-employed from employee to business owner. There is a huge change in perspective required, and it can be learned.

Marie Quigley: It can be learned.

Sarah Short: Yes.

Marie Quigley: But it might come more natural to some than others, and if you have a resistance to the word of entrepreneur or the word of money, then your relationship with building a business is going to be very different than if you have a different perception about that. And it sounds like that's what you're if you're working on the mindset of a coach, that's absolutely what's required for you to get into a state where you can start owning yourself, and what you, what you want to bring to the world.

Sarah Short: So yes, now there's there are a few bits in that, because I know, you know, when I'm talking about these scales, these are your delivery skills. These are sales and marketing skills. I know that there will be people listening to this podcast going sales and marketing. I'm rubbish at that. I'm rubbish at sales. I don't like being pushy. I don't like being braggy or boasty, or and the idea sales in particular. But marketing tends to get tarnished or tarred with the same brush. There is this perception that what is required of you when you market and or sell is that you drag your metaphorical chair onto a metaphorical stage. You put it right in the middle and you climb on it with your metaphorical megaphone and shout. buy my stuff that is about as far away from marketing as it is possible to get. and the reason that coaches think that's what marketing is is because when they look around, let's say, Linkedin, because we all know Linkedin. They look around. Linkedin, and most coaches are connected to hundreds of other coaches on Linkedin, and so what they see is other coaches going? Oh, I'm so what I'm humbled! My clients have said this. I'm so let me tell you about my latest qualification, and they are humble, bragging. or, or worse. My absolute favorite is when coaches over share on Linkedin, I call it bleeding all over Linkedin. It is toe curlingly uncomfortable, and so they overshare wildly overshare. When you think we are professionals selling a professional service, and you have a coach talking like basically airing their dirty laundry in public, and then all these other coaches jump in the comments going? Oh, you're so vulnerable! Oh, how brave of you! It's like that's not marketing. That's people oversharing on Linkedin and their kind of friends and colleagues. Other coaches jumping in going. Oh, aren't you want? That's not how we find clients, you know oversharing. Can you imagine, for example, if you went to the doctor and said, I've got a terribly sore throat? And she said, Yes, me, too. Yeah, like what I don't. I don't want you to tell me how sick you are. I don't want you to. I'm not interested in you. doctor. I'm interested in how you can help me. and that is absolutely the case with potential coaching clients. Now, I think there is like a whole commercialization, commercial reality to coaching that our profession does not deal with doesn't deal with at all, not even doesn't deal with well, but doesn't deal with at all. And when I said about sales and marketing and coaches feeling uncomfortable and sticky. What I can tell you is that if you market well. most other coaches won't even know what notice that you're doing it because they are not your target audience. And what tends to happen in our profession is people try and they try everything they can think of, and they try, and they try, and they try. And in the end they just can't find anybody real, as in muggles they can't find anybody who's interested in what they do. And so then the dark underbelly of our profession is that we all end up coaching each other. coaches, coaching, coaches, coaching, coaches, coaching, coaches, and I think well, I think it's a shame. Not that there's not massive value in being coached ourselves, but if you want to build a business. a coaching business. You're probably not going to be coaching coaches because coaches have access to reciprocal coaching, and you know all these different that coaches can find a coach. and so what we need to get good at is articulating the value and the benefit of what we do in words that are understood by non coaches. muggles. I loved your muggles thing that. And when I think about the coaches who come and work with us, they've often spent a lot of money elsewhere trying to make this gig work. and one of the places that they will spend money is with a business coach, and here's the thing you cannot coach across a knowledge gap. It doesn't matter how brilliant the coaches and how willing the coachie is. You cannot coach across a knowledge gap. Now. coaches don't realize they have this knowledge gap. They don't realize. But when they have these business coaching conversation they can come up with ideas. That doesn't mean that they're good ideas. you know. Oh, I've spoken to people that the worst case scenario is, somebody had spent $22,000 with with a coach, a a Us. Based obviously, Us. Based coach and spent a year working really, really hard and literally never made a red cent. And then others who've worked with. They've worked with people who have not given them pragmatic, actionable tasks because you're not going to learn how to do this unless you're taught step by step and given right. This is what I want you to go away and do. Now. This is how you do it. This is what I want you to do. So all our courses are taught. They're not coached, they're taught. And even more importantly, really, they're all taught by coaches who have been through our programs and one of our programs and have built very successful businesses using what they learned. And now, and they're still actively marketing their coaching businesses. And so you're being taught by coaches who are doing basically living the dream, as far as the rest of us are concerned, working with real people building real businesses, 6 figures, and beyond some of them not everybody wants a 6 figure coaching business, but that seems to be a phrase that floats around, and we do have mentors who have 6 figure businesses. but they are actively marketing, and they teach for the coaching revolution. As associates. You cannot be a full time Mentor, for the coaching revolution. You have to already be well. Number one have been through the program, and number 2 be actively promoting and marketing your coaching business. and that, I think, is a very distinct difference between what we do and what most other organizations do? And can I circle back to the Icf. Accreditation. It hasn't made any difference to what we teach, having that Icf accreditation what it has done. And this is. if we think about this from the perspective of this is my business, and I want my clients to understand that I am the real deal, the same as coaches have a business and they want their clients. It was important to our potential clients that we had the Icf accreditation, because then they could see that it's not just us that we're saying we were great. Somebody had looked through our stuff and gone. Yeah, okay, you can have this badge. which makes us stand out. And that's what we teach coaches how to do to their own target audience. Because at the end of the day, despite the fact that we're taught to share our story to build rapport. That's not a good marketing technique, and we're taught to go and network can be great if you have a strategy behind it or deliver strategy sessions and make them really, really amazing, so that the person's going to want to pay you to help them reach the goals that you've discussed. Well, yes, we can pick up the odd client like that. but they tend not to be a professional rate. And there comes a point where you realize that the amount of energy that you're expending, delivering, coaching for free and the amount you're getting back in income, that it's it's not sustainable. And so. if you can think I'm talking to listeners now. Nobody cares about us. They don't care about our coaching qualifications. They don't care about how you know, humble, braggy we are about our story to build rapport. What they care about is what's in it for them. and to be fair, that's what we all care about when we are the consumer. We want to know. Why should I spend this money with you? What will I get out of it? And marketing is about being able to articulate that in a way that the person that we're attracting understands they recognize themselves in your marketing message and the sales and marketing thing if you market well. by the time somebody lands in your diary they know who you are. They know what you do. They know you do it for people like them, and they know what it costs. And so they are in that call with you because they want like a real chemistry session they want to know. Are you the person that I really hope you are based on everything that I've seen of you so far? And of course. if you've done it well, ethically, authentically, then you absolutely are the person that you wanted that they wanted you to be. And so you're not really selling anything you're simply saying, yes, you're exactly the sort of person I can help. Yes, you know what this costs. Would you like to work with me?

Marie Quigley: And as you're saying that with your vibrant energy, I'm also recognising there are some coaches who speak and sound different to Sarah and Marie and other coaches, and it is important that the voice you use is your voice.

Sarah Short: Your own voicemail.

Marie Quigley: The the information and and the connections you make are absolutely in your way of doing things.

Sarah Short: Yes, yes, absolutely and.

Marie Quigley: One of the keys. I think that set us apart. We can't be the same.

Sarah Short: And and if you're trying to be somebody else, you're being fake, and it shows it shows. And one of the conversations that I have quite frequently is. Oh, well, it's all right for you, Sarah, because you're an extrovert. Now, I am not just an extrovert. I am the extroverts extrovert. I refer you back to the performing Arts degree. but some of our mentors are the introverts introverts. Sarah Klein springs to mind. But on our website, if you go to the about us, page, you'll see all our mentors, and the only bit of information about them is their Linkedin. If you click on their Linkedin logo beneath their names. You can go and look, and you will see at a glance who they work with what they do. Their prices will be on there. They are very, very clear about which target audience they serve. and we have several introverts amongst them, and being good at marketing, because it isn't about showing off, and it isn't about blowing your own horn. And it's not about any of those things. It's about showing up authentically to the kind of people that you can help the most consistently with a message that they can recognize themselves. And they recognize that when you're talking about this challenge that they have. They can see she's talking about me. that that's me. And and this is when people 1st join us, and I'll say, you know, people will jump into your dms, and they'll say, Gosh! You know, Marie, I read this thing that you wrote, or I heard this thing that you said. You're talking about me. and every now yeah, and then they'll go. I've had somebody come in and say, Gosh! It was like, you're already inside my head, and that's the secret of it's not even a secret, is it? But that's the essence of good marketing. The essence of good marketing is being able to articulate exactly the problem that your potential client is struggling with, that your coaching can help them resolve.

Marie Quigley: And thank you for sharing that, Sarah. When I set up my business it was before the Internet. So it's a very different game. Game. I don't mean that in the way that I've just said it, but the whole process is very different to building a business. Going online was not required from me, and I've got in mind a coach who's been well trained. who's come out of their sector and is, has never worked for themselves before, and has taken some marketing programs, but it really doesn't fit with how they want to communicate with the rest of the world about their their offerings. And 2 years down the line. They're so exhausted from all of this.

Sarah Short: And hence the 2 years.

Marie Quigley: Yeah, that it. And it is interesting that you said that because this is 2 years that they are now wondering, how else can I make a living that's not running this business because it feels exhausting.

Sarah Short: Because they hate it because they've done. This is a really interesting thing. Coaches are usually very intelligent people. You don't come across thick coaches, she says, in a proper Lancashire term there. But you know we're clever. We're clever. We tend to be reasonably quick thinkers, quick witted, you know. We are good, intelligent, hardworking, very dedicated people. And what that tends to mean is that I'm saying quick thinkers. We're not necessarily quick thinkers, but we're good thinkers. But what that means is that we are very good at improvising and making it work, whatever it is that we're improvising. you know. I call it winging it. We're good at winging it and getting a successful result out of when we wing it. But here's the thing. Normally, when we're winging it, we're winging it within our sphere of knowledge and skill and marketing is a completely different skill to one that most people have. And interestingly, we work with people who have marketing degrees and entire careers in marketing who've become coaches, and they'll come to me and say. I I don't know how to sell this. I know how to sell this. How do I? This feels very different. And so it isn't even it. It's a company. Our our education systems create employees. They don't create entrepreneurs. We are not taught how to be self-employed people, and in fact, I mean not in my case. But you will often come across people who say, Oh, you know I was absolutely awful at school, but once I got out and I started a business, and our our education systems have been designed for hundreds of years to create the employees that commerce needs. And what we're doing here is stepping out of that and and doing something different. And marketing is counterintuitive. We feel like it's got to be right to cast our net wide and talk to as many people as we can about what we're doing and about our new coaching business, and the truth is that is 180 degrees the opposite of what we should be doing, because what we should be doing is absolutely narrowing our focus and choosing a niche or a target audience. They're the same thing or the people I want to help. But a very, very specific target audience and then creating a marketing message that speaks really specifically to that kind of audience that says, I know you, I understand the thing that you're struggling with that coaching can resolve. I know how this thing is affecting you. I know it's keeping you awake at night. I know how it's affecting work. I know how it's affecting your relationships potentially, your social life potentially, even your health. And I even know what you've done to try to resolve this problem. Let me explain to you why those things didn't work and let me reassure you. That number one. You are not alone what you, the situation that you found yourself in is perfectly normal for somebody in that situation, and I work with people like you. I know you're here. I know you want to be there, and this is what I do.

Marie Quigley: And so, Sarah, that's really beautifully articulated. But you might have a coach that's on Linkedin, as you, surrounded by other coaches, who don't need that service.

Sarah Short: So if they've articulated all of that, but if they're in the wrong.

Marie Quigley: Group of people.

Sarah Short: Okay.

Marie Quigley: Can't be heard.

Sarah Short: It can't. So when you know who your target audience is, you know where they are on and offline because marketing today. Yes, yes, you need a digital footprint. You know, we're dinosaurs. If we think we can, we can manage this without any sort of digital footprint. There is always the odd person. I met somebody the other week actually, who doesn't have any digital footprint at all. but she is a coach with existing monetizable credibility. So what I mean by that is, she had a a reasonably senior role in corporate, and she let she went to train to become a coach, and having finished a coach training. She opened a little black book. and she had conversations with some of her colleagues who already knew, liked and trusted her, and they were in a of sufficient status, if you like to be able to commission coaching big corporate coaching packages, and and so, of course, then, from the coach provide training providers point of view. She was held up, as you see, you just need to have good conversations, that's all this lady did. But the truth is, we don't all start from the same place as she did. We don't all start with that book of connections. But to come back round to what you said about. They're not in the right place. There are a few bits to building a business. and and the one that coaches always forget is that you have to curate an audience. Now, what I mean by that is the Internet is both a blessing and a curse when it comes to building a business. And the reason it's a curse is because we all feel that if we write something online, let's just use Linkedin again as an example, we write something on Linkedin that everybody's gonna see it. And the truth is the way that the Linkedin algorithm works is that a tiny percentage of the people that you're connected with will see it. And you know it might be that you've written something that has a lot of reaction or a lot of linger, and then maybe a few more people will see it and a few more. But it's in kind of concentric circles effectively. And so the piece that coaches don't realize they need to do is to lose that audience of coaches because Linkedin is an AI tool. and what it learns is, oh, Marie, you're connected to all these coaches. That's who you want, that's whose content you want to see and who you want to see your content. So number one. get rid of all those coaches. Now, obviously, we've all got some coaches that we really want to be connected with, that we would be horrified to to lose that connection with. But if we are perfectly honest when we go down that list of people we're connected to, we can't even remember half of them. Oh, maybe we did a training course with them, or maybe we met them at a conference. Or maybe this, or maybe we don't think we don't have a relationship with them. Now, number one, when you disconnect from somebody on Linkedin, they don't get a message. They don't get a message that says Marie's fallen out with you. They you? Just that connection just vanishes. And then you need to start building connections who are people who look like the kind of people that you want to work with. And how how long are we have we got here, Marie? Because, let me, there's another really important thing. If I say to coaches, what's your niche. They say one of 2 things they'll say either. Oh, I'm a transformational coach. It's like we're all transformational coaches. That's what we do or this, I'm a change coach, or it's like the word coach is already a barrier because it. People don't understand it, adding a word in front of it doesn't make it less of a barrier. So those are not niches. Those are job titles. The other thing that they'll say is, they'll say, Oh, I work with people who are overwhelmed, or people who are stuck or people in transition. Right? That's the problem that your target audience has. If you really want to work with people who are stuck. Let me give you an example of somebody who might be stuck. Let's say we have somebody who has climbed the corporate ladder, the greasy pole, as it were, and they've got to, let's say, 45 years old, and suddenly realized that the thought of doing this job for the next 20 years makes them want to poke pins in their eyes that they're going. Oh, no, I've climbed this greasy pole, and it's the wrong pole. What do I do now? Now that is a problem that coaching can help resolve. And if you imagine that the problem is like the horizontal, that's the what. What we also need to know is the who. who, which profession, industry, or sector does that person fit into now? And this is where this is, where it. It gets quite controversial that I have coaches going. But hang on a minute. That's not how I want to do this. Okay, you can do it any way you like. If you want it to work, I I strongly suggest that you sit with this to choose a target audience. That's a target audience whose language you speak back to. We need to be able to describe this in their words, not in ours. One of the most effective ways of doing that is to look back through your life and see whose life have I? Who who have I either been or had a front row seat to their life. And so, therefore I know how their lives go, and I don't just mean how their jobs go, but how how the rhythm of their life goes, because, being able to describe the rhythm of life, and how the they're struggling with changes based on the rhythm of their life, let me give you an example of what I mean by that somebody who's a teacher, for example, their lives have a different ebb and flow than somebody who is, let's say, a medic.

Marie Quigley: No.

Sarah Short: And so, understanding that you're doing that rundown to the school. Let's say they're a school teacher. You're doing the rundown to the school holidays, you know. They can see the finish line. All teachers are sick for the 1st week of the school holidays, and understanding that, and being able to go and relax. And yeah, go and get the calpel or paracetamol, whatever it is, and understanding how the pressure of an external inspection, or how helping children move all the different things that go on in the life of a teacher, and the way teachers lives run, so they might be home early, but they might be sitting up late, marking and preparing. And what have you being able to demonstrate knowledge, understanding, and empathy for the situation that they have. that they've that they found themselves in, and also how their lives wrap around this. This is some really detailed work to be done. And so. if you can look back through your life, and it may be that it isn't a younger version of you, and that's fine. It could be a younger version of you, but it may be that it's not a younger version of you, and providing you've had a front row seat. So what do you mean? A front row seat? Maybe your parents, or maybe your husband, or maybe your sister. You know somebody who, you know really well, and you've seen how their lives go. And you understand the impact that work has on their life, and actually quite a few coaches, not not the majority, but quite a few, will when they've sat with that for a while they'll say, do you know what I want to be the coach that I wish I'd had at this point in my career. because that was a real problem for me, and had I had access to coaching, I would have made completely different decisions, and I would not be where I am now, I mean, obviously they're happy now because they're coaches, but they they've often been through a very difficult phase to get from where they were to where they are now.

Marie Quigley: And they may not be happy because they may not be earning the money to stay.

Sarah Short: Yeah.

Marie Quigley: Field of business. Yes, in the field of coaching.

Sarah Short: One of the things to remember with marketing a coaching business is that the things that coaching can help with often have quite a strong element of shame attached to them, even when they should not have. There is no reason for that person to feel ashamed. But if we go back to Our Lady, who at 45 is up the wrong greasy pole, as it were. She will feel ashamed. She will be like oh, no, I can't let anyone know that I'm feeling like this. It's like top secret. I'm embarrassed. How have I got myself in this situation? And so what that means from a marketing perspective is. It's unlikely that people are going to engage with things that we write on Linkedin. because they will feel that they're going to out themselves by liking a post that you've written about. Are you up the wrong? Are you hating your job? Are you just hating it? Do you glide into the weekends going. Thank goodness, that's over. And do you sit on Sunday evening going? I can't do this again for another week now they're not going to go. Oh, yes, that's me, because they think everybody will see. And so there's a level of sensitivity and respect and empathy come back to this empathy involved in marketing to these people who are feeling sad, sad, embarrassed. unhappy often. and so having the what this is the problem I want to work with, and the who. So when we're thinking about the who the easiest way to think about that is, if you go to the search bar on Linkedin. and if you type overwhelmed. What you will find is thousands of coaches who say they work with people who are overwhelmed. That is not a target audience. Those coaches are not, that is that I would. I would be prepared to to have a small wager that that is not working for those coaches, because, of course, they're all connected to other coaches. If you go to that search bar, you need to be able to type in job titles. You need to know which sector. which person which and there may be a few job titles that are kind of around the same, that level of person. and where the what and the who where they cross. That's where the the the proper term is. Ideal client, avatar. But that's where your ideal client avatar sits now that ideal client avatar once you know who they are. that you can literally forget everybody else in the world and your marketing. You write your marketing message for that person, and if you imagine that person sits in the middle of your dartboard, you've got a dartboard. That person sits exactly in the middle of the dartboard on the bullseye. but the majority of your clients will come from A. They won't be exactly like your ideal client, so my ideal client is my ideal client. Avatar is a woman called Stella Hewitson, and she has a background in Hr. She's 42, I I can, I can tell you the ins and outs of her life. I know the names of her children, I know what things she likes to read, and you a husband. I know what he does, and the truth is that most of our clients are significantly over 50. Not every single one of them, but most of them are, and when I created Stella Hewittson at the beginning of the coaching revolution journey in September 2017. It was my intention to have Stella as my the center of my bullseye of my dartboard for a year. and she's still there, and the reason that she's still there is because she works for us, you know, if I talk to Stella everything that I do. I'm talking to Stella whether I'm writing an article, whether it's an episode, of a podcast here, I'm thinking of Stella listening and going. But what about this, Sarah? But what about this, Sarah? I don't understand this. And how about this? Because I, now 8 years in, have spoken to thousands of stellars. And so I know that the problem that Stella has it is is a problem that is shared by honestly the majority of coaches, because we don't know how to market. Nobody ever teaches us how to market and marketing. Well. that this skill set doing that well is what means you get to do that, and that's what we all want to do.

Marie Quigley: And on that beautiful succinct note. Let's knowing that we've been speaking for about an hour, hasn't it? It's flown. If you could invite coaches to think about 3 things that they could do differently to support them. Cells.

Sarah Short: Yeah.

Marie Quigley: What? What would 3 practical things be that they could take action on pretty immediately.

Sarah Short: Okay, number one. And this is really easy for me to say, and it's not so easy for you to do is let go of the idea that marketing is inauthentic or unethical. It it is not. If you do it properly, it's not that that isn't that there is no such thing as inauthentic and unethical marketing, because there absolutely is there absolutely is. But marketing done well is both authentic and ethical.

Marie Quigley: So let go of the belief that it's that.

Sarah Short: Yes, that is a limiting belief. And I can say that because we know what that means, and and it's a limiting belief that will keep you from ever building a coaching business. Number 2. You spent time, energy, love, money building your coaching skills. You need to do the same for your client acquisition skills, they are equally important. And think, let me give you a a quick analogy. If somebody went and did a day of coaching, and then announced they were a coach, or they read a book on coaching, and suddenly announced they were a coach. We would just think they were ridiculous. How can you possibly develop your coaching skills from a 27 pound udemy course, or a, you know? Of course not. And our coaching skills are 50% of the skills we need to build a financially viable business. And our client acquisition skills are the other 50%. And lastly, and this is like a best kept secret. Marketing's actually really good fun when you know what you're doing, it's creative, it's it's engaging. And the best bit about it is that when you know, when I talk to coaches about what they want, what they want is to be able to have a positive impact on the world. And when you market this way you will reach people who will never become your clients. But there will be people who see things that you've written or hear, things that you say that will. they'll suddenly go, and their lives will change for the better because of that thing that you said that made them feel understood, that made them suddenly realize what the and there will be more of those than there will be clients that you actually work with. And I'm I can say this wholeheartedly, because I speak to coaches, will say you wrote an article about 4 years ago, and in it you said this. and I suddenly realized, of course. and it changed my coaching business, and and people will regularly. Oh, you know I read one of your books, and and gosh! It suddenly made sense. And so that's what we teach our coaches how to do. You can have that positive impact in your marketing as well as in your coaching.

Marie Quigley: So what I heard was let go of this limiting belief.

Sarah Short: Yes, recognize.

Marie Quigley: Yet recognize it and let go of it.

Sarah Short: Yes.

Marie Quigley: And choose a more empowering belief. Become more familiar with what's required from you to do this work.

Sarah Short: Yes.

Marie Quigley: And get creative with how you approach it.

Sarah Short: Yes.

Marie Quigley: And if that looked like something somebody could do. what would that look like? Sarah.

Sarah Short: They would. 1st of all, they would need to choose a target audience, sit down and choose a target audience and accept. And this is something that people go. But, Sarah, you don't understand it. It could be anyone who's overwhelmed like, I know. But you still need the who as well as the what, because until you've got both of those, you cannot begin to market until you know who you're talking to and how that particular problem is affecting that person in that role, and it might even be that what you want to coach around is nothing to do with work. But the way that we find people just on Linkedin, the way we curate an audience on Linkedin. And yes, there is lots more to it than Linkedin. The reason that I always refer to Linkedin is because we all know what it is, and we all know how it works. But to curate an audience you have to know who they are. So the the audience curation choose a target audience, and coaches will say to me, Is it possible to be too niche? I have never, ever in 8 years found a coach who's come to me and said, This is my target audience, and has been anywhere near tight enough. In fact, somebody said. I thought I had a niche, and it turns out I had a chasm. You you cannot be too niche.

Marie Quigley: Okay. So that's this, that's the tip for you.

Sarah Short: Choose a target audience.

Marie Quigley: More, more a strategy, actually, rather than a tip. But choose someone that you can speak to every day. Yeah, and let them know how your work is going to support them, to.

Sarah Short: Impact their lives. Yeah, it's it's being able to articulate the problem that they have and how that problem is showing up for them. you know. Is it so bad that they're not eating? Is it so bad that they're waking up in the night every night lying there going? Oh, I can't do this anymore? Is it giving them high blood pressure? Is it? You know I could go on? Is it affecting their relationships? Is it making them snappy at work? Is it because if, when you talk about those things, the things that none of us talk about. when you talk about those things, people feel, seen and heard and understood, and that in itself is a positive thing.

Marie Quigley: Which then allows you to really connect on Linkedin or any other platform.

Sarah Short: Or any anywhere else. Yeah.

Marie Quigley: With that person. Many, maybe, have many names, but it won't be the coaches that you are friends with that aren't needing your service.

Sarah Short: That's right, that's right. And and just to go kind of reiterate that this is not all about Linkedin. When you know who they are, you know where they are. So if they're mid level lawyers, well, you know where mid level lawyers are online and offline. So you know which conferences you might need to go to. Maybe there's some professional. You can stop going to every single networking event in the net in like within a 50 mile radius, because you only need to be where the kind of person you want to work is with is.

Marie Quigley: And if your person that you, because I there's a group that I work with that are not online.

Sarah Short: Yep, excellent!

Marie Quigley: There is no point in me talking to them online. I need to go to where.

Sarah Short: How is it, big caveat here, Marie? I would strongly recommend that if you're starting today that you do not choose a target audience that isn't online, because we live in 2025. And and you know that this we all need to be able to find our ideal client online and offline and.

Marie Quigley: Fair enough.

Sarah Short: It is really important that you can build a digital footprint because people will go and find you online. The vast majority. Yes, there's always this. Yes, but this is this odd little group over here, the vast majority of the world, if they have a conversation with you somewhere, a networking event, and they think, gosh, that was really interesting. Let me go and look you up. Your Linkedin profile will be above any Cv style website you might have created top tip. Don't create a website. Don't create a website until you know who it should be talking to, because nobody cares about your coaching philosophy. They don't know what coaching is. Why on earth would they care about your coaching? Philosophy? Don't? If I can stop people creating a website before they know what it should say. I do.

Marie Quigley: I think that stops a lot of coaches in their tracks in many, many ways trying to get that website right. Sarah, we need to pause. There's a lot of information here for our audience to digest. There's a lot of energy. There's a lot of words. There's a lot of processes. So for coaches who are fast and can process this fantastic. But if you aren't a coach that can process this fast, go back and listen to this again pause it, take notes. Look at what Sarah's offering in terms of what makes sense for you, and go and test out. rather than perhaps saying this. No, this isn't going to work for me. You don't know until you try.

Sarah Short: I can tell you it will work it. It works for everybody who is willing to put the time and energy and effort and willing suspension of disbelief. Yeah, it's marketing. It works. All we've done at the coaching. Revolution is hone it for coaches.

Marie Quigley: So, knowing that people may want to get hold of you. Sarah, how can they do that?

Sarah Short: You can either find me on Linkedin. I'm Sarah Shaw, or you can go to the coachingrevolution.com, and you'll find me there too.

Marie Quigley: Fantastic.

Sarah Short: As as I'm sitting here and thinking, Marie, may I offer you or your listeners a copy of my 1st book, which is a coaching business in a book which explains this whole process in detail with downloadable workbooks, etc. And I'll also offer them. Offer you a Pdf. Of both of my books. The other one's called Why Coaches Fail, and a chapter of that book about the commercialization of Coaching is the article that you read that made you reach out to me. In the 1st place.

Marie Quigley: Exactly. That's very generous of you, Sarah, and I'm sure will be great value for those who really want to look at what Sarah's talking about and support you to do some different thinking around this. Sarah. Thanks for your time. It's been a great pleasure. It's taken us a while to to get to this point to meet. Many other things have gotten in the way. But I'm glad we made it today, and coaches who are listening. If this resonates with you, we'd love you to share it. We'd love to hear your comments and reflections. If you want more of this, let us know if you want different things that you want to hear. Janine and I share on this podcast. Let us know we are here to serve you and make your life and your practice successful. Have a good day, everyone. Thank you for listening.