[This transcript has been automatically generated by a digital software and will therefore  contain errors and typos. Please kindly take note of this and only rely on the digital transcript for reference.]

00:00

Hey guys, welcome back to the show. This is Ted, your friend and host speaking. On today’s show, we have Tim Brownson who is not your typical life coach. After a decade’s worth of experience as a life coach Tim is now a life coach dating coaches life coaches. Wow, what a mouthful. While he initially struggled as well, Tim eventually managed to build out a successful practices a life coach, instead of noticing that other life coaches were reaching out to him for help. Today, Tim imparts his years of experience to help other life coaches succeed in a hyper saturated market. As Tim shares, there seems to be more life coaches than people who need life coaches these days. As a testament to his dedication, Tim has authored nine books and has written over 1500 self development articles with his work seen by over 3 million people today. In today’s episode, Tim shares the realities of becoming a life coach the power of high quality content, and how one can build trust with prospective clients. So if anyone out there is a life coach, or is looking to become one, this episode is for you. So guys, if you’d like to support the show, and the best we can do this is to subscribe, leave a review and to share it with somebody who find it useful as well. Now it’s a way to say thank you to you guys. If you actually do subscribe and leave a review on Apple podcasts by the end of September, you stand a chance to win $50 worth of gift vouchers from Amazon. one lucky winner will be chosen at random. And now let’s dive right in. Hey, Tim, thank you so much for joining us today. Such a pleasure to have you here.

 

01:21

You welcome Ted. It’s a pleasure to be here,

 

01:23

Tim, let’s have a little icebreaker so we can all get to know you a bit better. Who is Tim Brownson when he isn’t working?

 

01:30

Oh, wow, that that interesting question, because I’m seldom not working. I actually, I can remember reading an article by Seth Godin a few years ago where he said he had no hobbies I was thinking was quite sad. And then I had some neck problems. I used to play golf, and I’ve had a couple of surgeries on my neck and for disc activities. So I can’t really play golf now. So So my job is also my hobby. But I’m a dog person, I’ve got a couple of Dobermans, hopefully they’ll keep keep quiet through this. And so I like to where I live in England on the southwest, I can be on the on the beach, or in the woods on on the Moore’s and let the dogs loose. So, so I love that, you know, 25 years ago, I had been appalled at the party, I’d been appalled at the person I’ve turned into nothing, nothing like a quiet evening in with the dogs and the wife. So

 

02:23

actually, for me, when I was growing up, I actually had six dogs, so I definitely miss having a canine around the house. So Tim, how long have you had yours?

 

02:31

We’ve had them for over 25 years now.

 

02:36

Really proud of me. So Tim, share with us your story. I understand that you previously spent about 20 years in sales and marketing. Why did you step away from this industry? And more importantly, how did you become the person that you are today? A coach who coaches life coaches?

 

02:51

Yeah, okay, because there’s lots of those events. And, well, I got active, it was mainly sales related to liaise with the marketing departments, but I wasn’t really predominantly sales. And for the most of that period, it was new business sales, which is the hardest sales, you know, I’ve done account management, which is fairly easy. But I worked for three consecutive multi billion dollar companies sort of sort of back to back. And what I found is that it didn’t matter what the name of the company, it didn’t matter how good the products or services were, I used to set do I spent quite a long time selling outsourcing HR and payroll for a couple of the biggest companies in the world that do that kind of thing. But that didn’t matter because the companies never operate with integrity. It was Push, push, push, it was always like, okay, revenue product drive, which means you sell one product and you forget about the other whether they’re right for the client or not. At that time, I didn’t really understand anything about values, but I just knew it felt wrong all the time. I just felt like constantly under pressure. And it was a it was actually a manager of mine who was the best money. It’s still a friend of mine now 2020 years later, and he said he’d make a really good coach because he saw I would operate with a team and I’ve been in management and I used to manage really as a coach, you know, to encourage and look for solutions rather than just say just go and do it. And that got me thinking about it. And then I was sat in a place any basement with no skin thought which is a pretty sort of dark and dismal northern town in England. I was waiting sir client, I just thought I’ve got to get out of this. I’ve got to get to know somebody then. And that was at once I got into it. So I was already rabid about self development. At the time. There was no obvious there’s no war w it’s just coming on the scene. So I was buying CDs and driving all over the UK. That’s all I’ve listened to stop listen to the radio. It’s just self development, CDF saltiel and CD. So you know, I felt like I got a head start and that was it. And once I talked about that, I switched off from sales after that. I just knew that that was 2004. And I knew wasn’t what you want to do anymore again to Correct, correct, yeah. And then I still love the process of sales. By the way, I still love the technical element to sales. I still, I’m really passionate about sales. But doing it ethically, you know, and not just a question, just extract as much money as you can from being

 

05:20

well, but I’m sure that the skills that you picked up during your time in the sales and marketing industry actually has benefited you as they’re going your life coach practice, correct?

 

05:29

Yeah, correct. And also be in a better a better coach tab, because the three skills that you need to be a good salesperson, and the exact same three skills you need to be a good coach, which is build rapport, ask good questions, and then be prepared to listen and just be quiet, you know, so they’re the same was set prop. Good. That’s what good salespeople is. People tend to see bad salespeople who are butting in and sticking your foot in the door. And you know, that’s not good sales, good sales, people ask questions.

 

05:58

It’s a caricature of the kind of sausage vomits Exactly.

 

06:01

It’s a Glengarry Glen Ross, Olympia seen that movie? Is that kind of you know, that’s what people visualize for salespeople.

 

06:10

I understand where you’re coming from. So, Tim, in your own words, can you actually explain what a life coach does? And maybe, could you help debunk some of the most common misconceptions of the life coaching industry?

 

06:22

Yeah, I can. The thing is, there isn’t a definitive, you know, definition, you can’t go and talk to them said that something that everybody is going to agree on, you’re going to get a general idea what I call pure coaching, or co active coaching or solution coaching, which is just sort of alluded to, it’s really asking questions, and getting people to think differently. You know, that one of the things that I’ve not heard so much aimed at me, because I got into coaching fairly early, when it wasn’t well known, people were curious, that curiosity is evaporated now, because everybody knows a life coach or somebody wants to be a life coach themselves.

 

06:57

Everybody wants to be a life coach.

 

06:59

So what I see now, so I’ve got a Facebook group, and it’s like, 6000 coaches in there. And he’s very much the feedback that they get. And I asked this question last week was, I don’t need to tell me, I don’t need somebody tell me how to live my life. Well, that’s actually the antithesis of good coaching. If a coach is advising you on what to do your life, then they’re not really a coach. They’re a mentor, or a teacher or whatever. Katya, we all have blind spots. And I think he had worked with seven coaches over the years. And I’m actually not working on for now. But that’s finished. We were about six months ago, but I’ve, you know, I’m what was always got a coach that I’m working with, because I know I’ve got blind spots, you know, in my case, yeah, of course we do. Yeah, we do. It’s just that it’s the way the brain set up. So, so I think that’s the biggest one that is people are there to tell you, or, you know, coaches, they’re just, they’re just therapists without the training, or I did a lot of training for coaching. You know, the years life coach trainee and I did NLP to NLP master practitioners hypnotherapy, you know, a load of stuff. So. So there are coaches out there that really know what they’re talking about, and are great coaches, but unfortunately, there are people that latch on to the what a friend saying, well, you’re good at advising people, you should be a coach. Yeah, you’re right. I am. Let me You know, they get into coaching and they don’t understand the you the basics, the core sort of components of coaching, and they just kind of do their own thing. At the end of the day, it’s all about results. So if they’re getting results for the clients, or the clients they are, then it’s difficult to not that but

 

08:40

I understand now, in order to circle back later on this point about how everyone wants to or seems to be a life coach these days. And maybe because life coaching doesn’t really seem to be a regulated industry at the moment. But for now, let’s talk about what was it like when you first started coaching? I know you’ve written extensively about how hard it is to get clients in this industry. Could you share a little bit more about this? How did you land your first client?

 

09:04

My first client and by the way, is Austria has regulated coaching. They’re the first country in the world. So if you’re in Austria, tough, you’re going to have to get some form of accreditation. So I look, my first one was pure luck. So I’m moved. I started the practice and got the website up and running and started doing the marketing for it was in the UK, but then we moved to the US so we flipped flew out to Orlando to beginners, February 2006. It was by then, and and I had no you know, in the UK, I did work with some clients in the UK, but I don’t really count them because they were friends of friends. So it’s just a question of picking up the phone. But once I really started from from blank sheet, it was Look, the only person I knew in Orlando knew somebody was looking for a coach and I got that person after that. It was really I built that business on guest posting so Writing a lot of content myself throwing out a bunch of sometimes once a day blog posts, but also then contacting other people in the self development field, same can a guest post and get an inbound link. So to build up with my SEO, Search Engine Optimization, and started to get clients through that, but it was a, even though it was three years before I was in a position where if we hadn’t got savings, I wouldn’t be panicking. Yeah, it was because I didn’t really know. Yeah, I thought I knew more about marketing. I did. And I didn’t know anything about online marketing, it was still relatively new. I mean, it was just,

 

10:42

it’s a whole new game. Yeah,

 

10:44

the fundamentals underpin everything in marketing, but it but the approach is different. And if you don’t understand, you know how it works, you’re gonna get, you’re gonna get kicked up the rear by the coaches that do what the people that are in that space, understand that utilize,

 

11:01

was a fiercely competitive industry right now. Right? I think I read somewhere where you wrote that there could actually be more coaches than people looking for life.

 

11:10

Insurance. That’s the

 

11:11

that’s the state of discipline. I

 

11:12

do believe that. I mean, yeah. You know, that figure is it goes on my experience I’ve worked with individually with an A probably probably close to 500 coaches now. I’ve got four and a half 1000 on the newsletter, 600,000, my facebook group, our people here, they’re all they’re all struggling. Now you have to say, Well, if they weren’t struggling, they wouldn’t be in your Facebook group or coming to you for advice or whatever. Of course, I understand that this report, it wouldn’t what’s happened over the last year that had been significant tap. So so until about a week ago, something’s happening with the Facebook algorithm will tell that we’re asking about and what I started to notice about a year ago, 18 months ago, when I looked at the because I look at every profile to make sure they’re not marked in line with the questions. There’s so many people, ex hotel manager, for former boss staff here, whatever people are clearly loss of jobs from COVID. So we’ve gone from an industry that was pretty saturated as it was to one that’s just been, I don’t know what the next step up from saturation is Ted, very sad. saturated. So there’s all these people that have been thinking that maybe had friends told him that they could be a coach, or they’d read about coaching the gear? Well, let’s do that. Because the bar to entry, if there isn’t one, if you’ve got the intention of home, the bar to success is very high, but the bar to entry that there is more anybody can call themselves a coach and just set up. So so the it’s got even worse, because the training companies are selling a lie that is the fastest growing industry where Yes, it is but with coaches, you know, in the anybody can do it for 12 hours a week, and nobody can, you know, it’s just, there’s just so much bs out there. It’s frightening to be honest

 

13:03

with you. So Tim, what’s the right way for one to actually establish themselves as life coach? How can they learn their fundamentals properly?

 

13:09

Well, the first answer is slowly. The people that scare me that come to me I had a lady was probably it’s just before we move back to the UK, so it’s probably about a year ago now. And, and she had to be shared to 150k in the first year, because she worked in real estate. Although now I think she should probably be better in real estate. That’s difficult if you’re doing it online. So I think we have to separate Are you going to work online or offline? Are you going to combine the two, the quickest way to succeed as a coach is not online, is to get offline is to pick your phone or is to call

 

13:46

people meet people in person know,

 

13:48

do you know anybody that could benefit from my services? If so, give me the number, you know, and I can if I can use your name, and then you call them so you just call people you meet as many people as you can, because whereas I can probably meet, you know, 100 people in an hour online in some way, shape or form with social media, it unless they already know me, it’s very difficult to build rapport quickly on social media, it’s much easier to do in person, when you’re chatting with somebody, you can you can sort of get a sense three two ways with it, you know, like and trust somebody. So I would say that’s if you’re going to do quickly, forget about your online presence to begin with and focus everything offline. Go to as many meetings offered to give free talks, as always organizations like Rotary Club and lions and Chamber of Commerce that want free speaker and just get yourself in front of as many people as possible. If you do an online

 

14:41

investment, you can sharpen your skills, right,

 

14:43

exactly. You get better you get and it’s not just like public speaking and teaching as well. And I’ve done both. To really teach yourself a topic to really start you think you know something until you have to explain it to somebody else, you know, and then it becomes like

 

14:59

this. Yes, when you realize when you understand this Exactly, yeah.

 

15:03

So if somebody is going to do it online, exclusively online, unless you’ve got a lot of money to plow into social media, advertising, and even more to hire somebody that knows what they’re doing, because a really big mistake that seed coaches making is trying to do their own Facebook advertising. The reality is, you’re up against people who would just do that for a living. So Brooke Castillo owns the life coach, school librarian interview with her not long ago, I listened to an interview, she spends 100 grand a year on Facebook advertising. Now, she’s gonna be fairly dialed in to the process, the people who do it for understand it, when a coach comes in, you think well, I pay for that. So it’ll go in front of me. No, no, it doesn’t work like that. You know, it’s a skill. So they put money into Facebook advertising. So if you’ve got 10 grand, and you can afford to write it off, if it doesn’t work, there’s going to be element to testing, then you know, that’s fine. If not, you’ve got to give yourself 12 months online, Google isn’t sat around waiting for you to put a website up. Nobody cares. I actually think in this day and age, you better have a new website than a bad website, at least no website, you can look sort of almost mysterious, just have a LinkedIn profile. So that is like, No, I don’t believe it that way. If you’re a bad website, it’s not going to turn people off immediately. It takes time to index you actually lose credibility by that. But yeah, I see. And Ted about a couple of times a year, you say, I’ll ask people in the Facebook group, it first 2025 people, I’ll do an audit of their website from a from a conversion standpoint, and some of them are look at, I’m almost weeping, you know, I just kind of want to say, just tear this yourself from scratch. This is never there’s nothing I can tell you. Because he’s so fundamentally flawed, right from the, you know, the base up.

 

16:56

Yeah, I understand where you’re coming from, you know, some of these sites, you take yourself seriously, you’re trying to provide a professional service and trying to convince someone to work with you. And it looks like that, no one’s gonna trust you or want to work with you based on

 

17:09

your design your life coach and do your own website. If you’re not a designer, you’re going to end up with a website that looks like it was designed by a life coach. So I wouldn’t want that.

 

17:19

So guy says Tim has shared having a bad website is actually more detrimental to your business or your personal brand. And having no website or so of course, it’s important to have a good website. But if you don’t have the technical skills, at this point in time to get a friend to help you, or maybe get a web developer from one of the gig economy websites like Fiverr, and Upwork, you’ll be surprised it could actually be quite affordable to engage these freelancers. But the most important point is make sure that your website is professional so we can put you and your business in a good light. So Tim, you shared earlier on that you took about three years before you actually had a proper stable coaching business. And earlier on you so shared that it takes about 12 months to build a proper online presence. So I think the idea I would like for you to speak a little bit more about is that anyone who wants to actually be a life coach, better be prepared to have money in the bank to tie to this period, especially since it’s so hard to get paying clients in this industry.

 

18:11

Yeah, definitely. I mean, have money in the bank, if you need that money, if you’ve got a partner, and the partner can subsidize you or you can live on his or her wages, then that’s fine. You know, get into it. If you need to be making money to put food on the table, then this is not around. This is not an industry to dive into things. Yeah, there’s there’s other industry, you know, at the moment, and I think it’s the same in the US as it is in the UK, you can get a job driving a van everybody shelter drivers, you know, because that’s exploded. There’s loads of jobs out there and do that. And do you know, meet this, you know, part time thing to begin with, as you start to build in establish yourself plus, is getting comfortable coaching, getting comfortable with your marketing as well. I definitely get rich. I’ve toyed with using the tagline of get clients slowly because it is a slow process. And I’ve gone back and forth on it because I’m just not quite sure. People aren’t I need clients quickly.

 

19:12

No, Tim, there was another point that you shared. You said that earlier on in your career, you spent a lot of time writing blog posts and doing guest postings. Now, as you recall, in a recent article, you wrote that an article that you wrote about 12 years ago is still giving you fresh leads even to this day. So I think there’s a lot to be said about a compounding benefits of good quality content.

 

19:33

Right. Exactly. And, and, you know, like the compound effect, sort of metaphor, and you’re absolutely right, it does because there is content decay with older posts, so they will slide at some point, although I think the post you’re referring to I don’t know if I mentioned it, that I wrote a post called self development for kids that ranked self development for kids that number one for at least 10 years. I think it has Now I’ve not looked for a while back 10 years because it will use an exact match, you know, URL for people type it type conduct in. So it’s useful, but But yeah, content. And the other thing with content that a lot of people have been blogging, don’t understand that you can do so I’ve got a post. It’s now I think, 30 self Dione books every life coach should read. And he started off as 12, I think, so that once a year, I’ll go back into it. I’ll rewrite parts of it, I’ll add some more books, change the title, change the publication date, resubmit it through Google Search Console to Google, so it recalls it, and read and then re publish it. Because so those four and a half 1000 people my newsletter list to my open rates about 20%. So there’s always 80% of not read what I’ve sent out anyway, pluses new people coming on, and people dropping off from what have you. So if you’ve written something good, and it’s evergreen, don’t just leave it to rot. You know, if I wanted to work with kids, I would go straight back into that post and rewrite it like, you’ve got to leave the permanent line, you know, the URL was saying, unless you redirect, not Otherwise, it’ll just screw up everything, and then re publish it and Google things. Or you just put self help book kids in 2022. So that’s a great trick to fill Google, it works out, I can always get to the last two years have been life, life coach industry in 2020. And then 2021, I’ll do it again. I’ll go and change it for 2022 and get back to the top for that. It’s, it’s a trick that I don’t see many coaches do into that niche to niche.

 

21:40

So Tim, can you share how you made the transition from being a life coach to being a coach that teaches life coaches?

 

21:45

Yeah, so it kind of it was by accident, I never really intended. So sometime around about, I guess, 2011 or so I started to get coaches approached me. And I think that was because I actually got onto the first page of Google for the term life coach, like three times around about then and the traffic. Yeah, I was getting 1500 unique visitors a day to the site, I got over 10,000 people on that newsletter list. And Coach can see this. And so I said, Well, you know, would you show me what you’ve done? So I’d be like, Yeah, and I just really enjoyed it. Because it allowed me you were talking before about what coaching is about pure coaching or collective coaching. When I’m working with coaches, I don’t have to stick to that model. If you said to me, Tim, I’ve got this great idea for SEO, I’m going to put this keyword in 100 times in the article. And it’s going to rank well, I believe, now telecom does keyword stuffing, Google will jump on you for it being over optimized, and you’re never going to get that. So there’s that way you can do it. Where this isn’t a subjective opinion, this is an objective fact. So I like that ability to say, you know, let’s try this, or you know, this will work or that won’t work, as well as doing the more sort of subtle stuff in terms of trying to break down people’s beliefs that they can’t make it happen, and so on and so forth. So got more and more people. And I noticed, probably within a year, my workload was split down the middle because I was tended to choose to enjoy work with the coaches more so rarely turn in a coach away. Whereas on with motor business on a daring adventure, I would be like, you know what, I’m not really. And it started split. So then I launched a website, I think it was 2013, coach, life coach launched, and then aware, and I still do a daring adventure still live, although I think I’m going to sell some of the site, the domain, but I still do get inquiries from that and do take on the odd client. If I recently finished working with a guy who got a startup in the USA, high tech, business loved working with it, because it’s just a real high achiever. I love working with people like that. But it kind of morphed into it. And now I just say I work with coaches bought the only downside now is the industry’s got flooded with coaches working with coaches, many of whom are doing it because they couldn’t succeed as a coach themselves, and now they’re selling their, you know, they that I just don’t get me on that tape because it just frustrates me so much that you know, like effortless referrals, your business will explode. No, stop there.

 

24:35

Yeah, I know what you mean. I get those emails as well. And you’re so annoying. Yeah. So Tim, could you share some of the common issues that the life coaches who approach you need help with? Of course, being a good coach is a given but let’s talk about the other skill sets that you can actually come in to help them with in terms of their practice.

 

24:51

Well, I think I say this is a very general statement. Most coaches are better at coaching. Do you think and not as good at marketing as you think? So I think for new coaches, they come into the industry. And I, I’ve met loads of coaches that have spent five figures on training, and didn’t have a marketing budget. I’m one of them. I spent about 15, grand on on coaching on coach training and open source. When I first started, didn’t really think about the marketing. My my theory was that if I’m just really good at coaching, people will find, yeah, more more. Why?

 

25:37

You know, Tim, what surprises me is that you yourself actually came from the marketing and sales industry. But you had a kind of mindset as well, when you first started as a life coach. Yes. Quite sobering.

 

25:46

It’s ridiculous. Yeah. He said, and I wrote a blog post over 10 years ago now with the title. If you build it, they won’t come talking about coaches starting and just basically thinking I put a website and that’s what I thought, whoa, so websites out there, come on, then I’m ready. Who wants me? crickets tumble wages. Yeah. And that went on for a little while. So I think it’s, it’s coming in unprepared of how hard it is to get clients. You better coming in and I get told me because I’m battered this message to my list at least once every couple of weeks, I’ll put in something about it being hard. And every now and then I’ll get an email back from somebody else, somebody else. unsubscribe, and they’ll leave a comment saying too negative. But But here’s the thing, tell if something if I tell you the industry is really hard. And you and you, you decide not to become a coach, and I’ve crushed your dream? Well, I’ve just really favor I’ve just saved you. If you give off that easily, because Tim bramson some dude, some bold, no pasty white dude from from England said that you decided to quit on your dream, then it was genuine of you like Yeah, exactly, you’re in the wrong industry. To start with, you’re gonna have to find something where nobody else exists, and people will pay you for it. So you know, I think you better think he’s gonna be really hard, I think being a little bit less hard than thinking is going to be easy. And then suddenly, Wallach, you know, it’s that you have Seth Godin second dimension, he talks about the debt, where you set off with all this enthusiasm, and maybe pick up a couple of clients to start with. And then suddenly, there’s that debt process where it’s just slightly enthusiasm starts to ebb. And you start to realize this is a business, I think that it’s treating it as a business and not a hobby, you know, because because it is you’re walking into a super, super competitive industry, and you’re gonna get swallowed up if you don’t understand how to market and sell your service.

 

27:45

So it’s in this circle back to the point we spoke earlier about how the industry is in really regulated at the moment. So I know that there ICF equations, and you’ve written about your views on it, can you share with us your views, and this for the listeners at home, and maybe you could also share some tips on how you can tell a good coach, my bad one?

 

28:02

I mean, it’s tough. First of all, I said, if somebody has got the ICF accreditation, then I’m not again, I’m just against the ICF the amount of money they charge and the way you have to hire ICF coaches afterwards, this ongoing thing,

 

28:16

wrote an article about how it seems like a pyramid scheme

 

28:18

does really, it’s like questioning where it is, because I know there’s coaches, and I have to be careful what I said, but I know there’s coaches that can only keep going as coaches because of the work they get from the ICF, which seems to be that’s like a classic pyramid scheme, almost. Yeah, I see that. But I think for you, if you see somebody that’s got an ICF, then the gonna be a competent coach, you can’t bluff your way through the ICF training. And it’s usually 18 months, you know, you’ve got to, you’ve got to provide examples of your teaching, and there’s no real exam, and so on and so forth. So, so that would be a good starting point for me. If that’s absent, which is with Bobby 95% of coaches, so then then I would be looking at testimonials, body of work, how long have they been doing that, you know, somebody went on to a down adventure, if they can see I started blogging in 2006. You know, that will, the gun must be kind of okay, unless he’s sat on an inheritance. And, you know, I’m not, by the way, if you’ve got one, and I’ll take it, and sit on it. And so so your body of work, testimonials, don’t just look at the testimonials. I haven’t been on websites where I’ve seen fake testimonials from coaches, and I’ve known them to be fake and asked to speak to people. You know, I will often offer that do you want to speak with anybody I’m working with now I did this last week for les Yes, in law. I’ve got a client at the moment, which is a very, very similar position to you to want to speak with it. And she did so put me in touch. And she didn’t hire me. So I have no idea. I’m kidding. I’m not. So yeah, I think that’s all he can do. You And go on, don’t be afraid. And I used to say to people, I have said, I wouldn’t say to everybody, go and talk to a couple of other coaches, and then go with a person, go with your gut, don’t if anybody tells you, you’ve got it, you’ve got to tell them now, get off the phone call, put your wallet down, gone, put it in a block of ice or something where you can’t get to it just back on any coach walk away if the if they’re a decent coach and ethical coach. So think about it, and go with the one that you got instinctively that I really think I could get on with this person. Because you have to like, coach, yeah, you’ve read some of my stuff, Ted, you know, I use a lot of humor. If I tell a joke on a console call and it goes stony silence, I’m already thinking don’t want to work this person because I don’t want to have to rein in my humor. Because it’s so important to me. I can’t go a day without watching. So Ken’s

 

30:51

pointing the way that you will coach them as well. Right, right. Did that chemistry as well?

 

30:55

Exactly, you’ve got Yeah, you gotta like your coaches, coaches gonna like you and be pulling for you. In all my years, I think I’ve worked with maybe four people who I actually really didn’t like when they got to know them. And that kind of backed out of each one of those, actually one of them fire. But the only time I’ve ever been fired by coach, because I told him he needed to take on 2% responsibility said he refused to take more than 70% at it. He was a face to face class, he says, well, you’re fired, and then just walked out my house. And I never saw him again.

 

31:25

Wow, what a story live. So guys, as Tim has shared chemistry, and trust is such important ingredients to actually have a good relationship with a person or to convince someone to work with you. So do be very aware as to the impact that testimonials and reviews can have on your business. Now one great tip that Tim shared is to actually offer your clients to speak with your existing or past clients to get a real sensing as to your services in what you are like to work with your past and existing clients can be really strong advocates for you, and convince your new clients to work with you. So Tim, let’s speak a little bit about a book that you wrote called the clarity method. What is the Book about? And what do you hope to achieve with it? Well, the

 

32:07

book is about core values, basically. So when I originally wrote it, I first wrote it, it was called aligning with your core values back in about 2008, or nine. And core values are just something that I’ve always been, like super passionate about, I mentioned, the manager that I had, that really made a difference advise me to go into coaching, he was always values based. So what’s really important, not goals, your goals are fine. But goals need to be underpinned by your values, you know, what, what are the kinds of things that you will die for? Not necessarily literally, but you know, figuratively. So I started to notice that as I took client, I was taught to core values method that I adapted, and to change it quite a lot over the years, I was constantly playing about with it. And I noticed that pretty much all my major breakthroughs with clients were coming on this second session when I got into core values people are, so that’s why I like that. That’s why I do that. That’s why I don’t get on with that person. So it just became like, just super important to me. And then I when I started working with the coaches, a couple of people I think, asked me, anybody listen to this, he’s gonna think this guy had to look along his way. And I think I probably have, well, you need to have a couple coaches asked me to show them how to use it. And they really liked it. So I changed the book to basically to being more coaches and managers in the workplace. So that thinking back to my manager, how could you use this? How could you have this as like a template to use with, with employees to really understand what motivates him because we know that your money is a poor one to motivate you is pretty much what the sales industry exists on. So what how can we get people sort of basically motivated and engaged and wanting to do this? And if we put the money to one side, I mean, that’s always going to be important. So with the clarity method was relaunched it was, it was actually 2019. It came out in 2019. But it’s more aimed at coaches. So I used to teach it when I teach the coach training.

 

34:27

So you actually really niche down into providing the book for coaches.

 

34:30

Yeah. And I have thought, you know, it is something I’m so passionate about. And I’ve given a lot of interviews around core values in the book. You know, I blew the launch. I made a critical mistake on the launch of the book, which is I wouldn’t say it haunts me, but you know, it talks about the soul. Okay. Well, basically, the lady I had hired to help me off up work and she done a number of book launches. She sent me an email and said we want 50 people to do reviews on Amazon. So we did the launch, and we put it up at 99 cents, didn’t tell anybody. And then said we want 50 people to do reviews at Amazon. So I contacted 50 people or contacted bunch of people got 50 people said they do them. And then on the launch day 16 or 17 reviews went up. what she meant is we need 50 confirmed. She said he’d not you’d probably have to ask too young to pee. Oh, I see. I see. I didn’t do it. So it’s a bit complicated, but I didn’t really comment on what was going on for a while, you know? And she said, Yeah, so we only had 16 reviews go up when the book actually published. Now, anybody that’s watched the board can I’m sure you know, even if you haven’t launched a book that that first week is just super critical. The first day is really, you’re playing catch up if you don’t do it, then. So the book sold? Well, in total, it sold about 80 grands worth. But it could have any still, you know it trickles out now, but it could have done. Yeah, I genuinely believe any coach could benefit from reading. It’s just such a cool process. I still use it now with coaches, you know, to help me understand them better. And there really isn’t. And this is what prompted the writing First, there really isn’t anything authoritative out there on core values. And this should be because it’s so integral to who we are as people, it dictates everything we do, how we think and what you don’t get been happy in my view. And yet, it doesn’t really get discussed a lot goals do 1000 book out books out there were goals. But if your goals aren’t values driven, they’re not really going to fail you. I bet you know, some serial goal setters, they’ll set a goal. They’ll hit it and I know that’s all right, obviously wasn’t big enough, they’ll set another one. But yeah, because it’s driven by value the

 

37:02

hamster wheel right? You’re always chase yes thing, but you’re exactly if you are fulfilled or the everyday investor does

 

37:11

not value driven, you know, but if you have a goal of say, setting up a, you know, a hospital in I don’t know, Afghanistan doubt people, you know, from the recent troubles. Well, you know, I said values driven goal that’s going to give you satisfaction as you move through every stage of the process may say, Well, I you know, I’ve got a, I’ve got a goal of buying a new iMac, which I seem to have anyway, because I’m a hypocrite every two years. You know, it’s like you get it, yes, an iMac. And it works. And it’s fine. And I’m talking to Ted on it now. But guess what, you know, doesn’t give me really any, you know, that deep feeling of worth?

 

37:49

I understand. I understand. So Tim, here’s my next question. The listeners only remember one thing from today’s conversation, while you’d like it to be,

 

37:58

well, I think it’s a part of my book. But if it’s a coach, if they’re a coach and say, dive into marketing, just learn marketing, hire help, I don’t necessarily mean me, you know, get help. Like I said, at the beginning, I’ve worked with seven coaches, I have no problem. hiring somebody to because to me, I see it as a shortcut. And it can save me a lot of time. And actually, I didn’t do it for a year. Well, I said it took me about three years, the really the tipping point was me, Hi, my own coach, that wasn’t just a life coach, I had a business coach. So just just get help. One of the things in my facebook group that frustrates me is is 6000 people in there. And I regularly say, look, if you want help with something, ask tag me and I’ll help you. But people seem reluctant. I was the kid that just never got him back saying you know, if I if I don’t know something immediately, I’m trying to research it cuz I hate not knowing I’ll ask. So you’ve got. So that’s the takeaway. That will be the takeaway. Ask people ask people for their help. If you don’t understand something, don’t you’re not stupid. Everything I know, our wants didn’t know we were all in that situation will be stuff I don’t know. Now that I will know in a year’s time. So ask, and then but yeah,

 

39:20

maybe try to ask some thoughtful questions, do some research. And before you actually come in, ask him your questions. Right. Yeah, I

 

39:27

mean, it just bugged me when people come in the group and the first question is, how do I get clients? You know that that’s kind of like Well, come on, you know, do something get a little bit make it a little bit. So yes, yeah. I’m glad you clarified that.

 

39:42

So Tim, how can our listeners get in contact with you if they need your help?

 

39:46

To get back to go to coach life coach calm. I am on social media, but I tend to apart from my facebook group, and they can find me on LinkedIn and say hello to it’s just a LinkedIn My name too. Tim bramson twitter address use for being stupid and telling jokes and, and trolling Trump when he was on. Yeah, yeah, no, don’t don’t take NSA too seriously. I’m very tongue in cheek and I only a part of my group, I tend to use Facebook just for communicating with friends and sharing stuff more heavier which, which from a business standpoint is not wise I would do better if I opened it up to coaches. But yeah, so so just go to the website, something newsletter, then come and join my facebook group. That will be great.

 

40:31

Oh, right now, Tim, thanks so much for joining us today. It’s been such a pleasure to have you here. Likewise, it was a pleasure talking to you, Ted. Thank you. So guys, thank you so much for joining Tim and I in today’s conversation. While this episode was really focused on life coaching industry, I’m sure that there are many tips that could apply to any industry in the world, Tim really focused on the importance of marketing for new life coaches. And this actually applies universally to any business. So have a think about your website. Is it well designed? Is it badly designed, it is badly designed and have a think about how we can improve this because this could be costing you sales at the moment. And remember, it’s always good to build up your reviews and testimonials to help develop trust with your prospective clients. And of course, if your prospective clients have any doubts is a good idea to try to refer them to your existing clients or past clients. Let them have this conversation. And this is a great way to let them have a greater idea of what it is like to work with you. So guys, if you enjoyed today’s episode, and you’d like to show your support, and don’t forget to subscribe, leave a review and share this with somebody who will find it useful as well. And as a way to say thank you to you guys. you subscribe and leave a review on Apple podcast but it ended September, then you may stand a chance to win $50 worth of gift vouchers from Amazon. one lucky winner will be chosen at the end of the month. That’s all for me today. I’ll see you next time.

[This transcript has been automatically generated by a digital software and will therefore  contain errors and typos. Please kindly take note of this and only rely on the digital transcript for reference.]

00:00

Hey guys, welcome back to the show. This is Ted, your friend and host speaking. On today’s show, we have Tim Brownson who is not your typical life coach. After a decade’s worth of experience as a life coach Tim is now a life coach dating coaches life coaches. Wow, what a mouthful. While he initially struggled as well, Tim eventually managed to build out a successful practices a life coach, instead of noticing that other life coaches were reaching out to him for help. Today, Tim imparts his years of experience to help other life coaches succeed in a hyper saturated market. As Tim shares, there seems to be more life coaches than people who need life coaches these days. As a testament to his dedication, Tim has authored nine books and has written over 1500 self development articles with his work seen by over 3 million people today. In today’s episode, Tim shares the realities of becoming a life coach the power of high quality content, and how one can build trust with prospective clients. So if anyone out there is a life coach, or is looking to become one, this episode is for you. So guys, if you’d like to support the show, and the best we can do this is to subscribe, leave a review and to share it with somebody who find it useful as well. Now it’s a way to say thank you to you guys. If you actually do subscribe and leave a review on Apple podcasts by the end of September, you stand a chance to win $50 worth of gift vouchers from Amazon. one lucky winner will be chosen at random. And now let’s dive right in. Hey, Tim, thank you so much for joining us today. Such a pleasure to have you here.

 

01:21

You welcome Ted. It’s a pleasure to be here,

 

01:23

Tim, let’s have a little icebreaker so we can all get to know you a bit better. Who is Tim Brownson when he isn’t working?

 

01:30

Oh, wow, that that interesting question, because I’m seldom not working. I actually, I can remember reading an article by Seth Godin a few years ago where he said he had no hobbies I was thinking was quite sad. And then I had some neck problems. I used to play golf, and I’ve had a couple of surgeries on my neck and for disc activities. So I can’t really play golf now. So So my job is also my hobby. But I’m a dog person, I’ve got a couple of Dobermans, hopefully they’ll keep keep quiet through this. And so I like to where I live in England on the southwest, I can be on the on the beach, or in the woods on on the Moore’s and let the dogs loose. So, so I love that, you know, 25 years ago, I had been appalled at the party, I’d been appalled at the person I’ve turned into nothing, nothing like a quiet evening in with the dogs and the wife. So

 

02:23

actually, for me, when I was growing up, I actually had six dogs, so I definitely miss having a canine around the house. So Tim, how long have you had yours?

 

02:31

We’ve had them for over 25 years now.

 

02:36

Really proud of me. So Tim, share with us your story. I understand that you previously spent about 20 years in sales and marketing. Why did you step away from this industry? And more importantly, how did you become the person that you are today? A coach who coaches life coaches?

 

02:51

Yeah, okay, because there’s lots of those events. And, well, I got active, it was mainly sales related to liaise with the marketing departments, but I wasn’t really predominantly sales. And for the most of that period, it was new business sales, which is the hardest sales, you know, I’ve done account management, which is fairly easy. But I worked for three consecutive multi billion dollar companies sort of sort of back to back. And what I found is that it didn’t matter what the name of the company, it didn’t matter how good the products or services were, I used to set do I spent quite a long time selling outsourcing HR and payroll for a couple of the biggest companies in the world that do that kind of thing. But that didn’t matter because the companies never operate with integrity. It was Push, push, push, it was always like, okay, revenue product drive, which means you sell one product and you forget about the other whether they’re right for the client or not. At that time, I didn’t really understand anything about values, but I just knew it felt wrong all the time. I just felt like constantly under pressure. And it was a it was actually a manager of mine who was the best money. It’s still a friend of mine now 2020 years later, and he said he’d make a really good coach because he saw I would operate with a team and I’ve been in management and I used to manage really as a coach, you know, to encourage and look for solutions rather than just say just go and do it. And that got me thinking about it. And then I was sat in a place any basement with no skin thought which is a pretty sort of dark and dismal northern town in England. I was waiting sir client, I just thought I’ve got to get out of this. I’ve got to get to know somebody then. And that was at once I got into it. So I was already rabid about self development. At the time. There was no obvious there’s no war w it’s just coming on the scene. So I was buying CDs and driving all over the UK. That’s all I’ve listened to stop listen to the radio. It’s just self development, CDF saltiel and CD. So you know, I felt like I got a head start and that was it. And once I talked about that, I switched off from sales after that. I just knew that that was 2004. And I knew wasn’t what you want to do anymore again to Correct, correct, yeah. And then I still love the process of sales. By the way, I still love the technical element to sales. I still, I’m really passionate about sales. But doing it ethically, you know, and not just a question, just extract as much money as you can from being

 

05:20

well, but I’m sure that the skills that you picked up during your time in the sales and marketing industry actually has benefited you as they’re going your life coach practice, correct?

 

05:29

Yeah, correct. And also be in a better a better coach tab, because the three skills that you need to be a good salesperson, and the exact same three skills you need to be a good coach, which is build rapport, ask good questions, and then be prepared to listen and just be quiet, you know, so they’re the same was set prop. Good. That’s what good salespeople is. People tend to see bad salespeople who are butting in and sticking your foot in the door. And you know, that’s not good sales, good sales, people ask questions.

 

05:58

It’s a caricature of the kind of sausage vomits Exactly.

 

06:01

It’s a Glengarry Glen Ross, Olympia seen that movie? Is that kind of you know, that’s what people visualize for salespeople.

 

06:10

I understand where you’re coming from. So, Tim, in your own words, can you actually explain what a life coach does? And maybe, could you help debunk some of the most common misconceptions of the life coaching industry?

 

06:22

Yeah, I can. The thing is, there isn’t a definitive, you know, definition, you can’t go and talk to them said that something that everybody is going to agree on, you’re going to get a general idea what I call pure coaching, or co active coaching or solution coaching, which is just sort of alluded to, it’s really asking questions, and getting people to think differently. You know, that one of the things that I’ve not heard so much aimed at me, because I got into coaching fairly early, when it wasn’t well known, people were curious, that curiosity is evaporated now, because everybody knows a life coach or somebody wants to be a life coach themselves.

 

06:57

Everybody wants to be a life coach.

 

06:59

So what I see now, so I’ve got a Facebook group, and it’s like, 6000 coaches in there. And he’s very much the feedback that they get. And I asked this question last week was, I don’t need to tell me, I don’t need somebody tell me how to live my life. Well, that’s actually the antithesis of good coaching. If a coach is advising you on what to do your life, then they’re not really a coach. They’re a mentor, or a teacher or whatever. Katya, we all have blind spots. And I think he had worked with seven coaches over the years. And I’m actually not working on for now. But that’s finished. We were about six months ago, but I’ve, you know, I’m what was always got a coach that I’m working with, because I know I’ve got blind spots, you know, in my case, yeah, of course we do. Yeah, we do. It’s just that it’s the way the brain set up. So, so I think that’s the biggest one that is people are there to tell you, or, you know, coaches, they’re just, they’re just therapists without the training, or I did a lot of training for coaching. You know, the years life coach trainee and I did NLP to NLP master practitioners hypnotherapy, you know, a load of stuff. So. So there are coaches out there that really know what they’re talking about, and are great coaches, but unfortunately, there are people that latch on to the what a friend saying, well, you’re good at advising people, you should be a coach. Yeah, you’re right. I am. Let me You know, they get into coaching and they don’t understand the you the basics, the core sort of components of coaching, and they just kind of do their own thing. At the end of the day, it’s all about results. So if they’re getting results for the clients, or the clients they are, then it’s difficult to not that but

 

08:40

I understand now, in order to circle back later on this point about how everyone wants to or seems to be a life coach these days. And maybe because life coaching doesn’t really seem to be a regulated industry at the moment. But for now, let’s talk about what was it like when you first started coaching? I know you’ve written extensively about how hard it is to get clients in this industry. Could you share a little bit more about this? How did you land your first client?

 

09:04

My first client and by the way, is Austria has regulated coaching. They’re the first country in the world. So if you’re in Austria, tough, you’re going to have to get some form of accreditation. So I look, my first one was pure luck. So I’m moved. I started the practice and got the website up and running and started doing the marketing for it was in the UK, but then we moved to the US so we flipped flew out to Orlando to beginners, February 2006. It was by then, and and I had no you know, in the UK, I did work with some clients in the UK, but I don’t really count them because they were friends of friends. So it’s just a question of picking up the phone. But once I really started from from blank sheet, it was Look, the only person I knew in Orlando knew somebody was looking for a coach and I got that person after that. It was really I built that business on guest posting so Writing a lot of content myself throwing out a bunch of sometimes once a day blog posts, but also then contacting other people in the self development field, same can a guest post and get an inbound link. So to build up with my SEO, Search Engine Optimization, and started to get clients through that, but it was a, even though it was three years before I was in a position where if we hadn’t got savings, I wouldn’t be panicking. Yeah, it was because I didn’t really know. Yeah, I thought I knew more about marketing. I did. And I didn’t know anything about online marketing, it was still relatively new. I mean, it was just,

 

10:42

it’s a whole new game. Yeah,

 

10:44

the fundamentals underpin everything in marketing, but it but the approach is different. And if you don’t understand, you know how it works, you’re gonna get, you’re gonna get kicked up the rear by the coaches that do what the people that are in that space, understand that utilize,

 

11:01

was a fiercely competitive industry right now. Right? I think I read somewhere where you wrote that there could actually be more coaches than people looking for life.

 

11:10

Insurance. That’s the

 

11:11

that’s the state of discipline. I

 

11:12

do believe that. I mean, yeah. You know, that figure is it goes on my experience I’ve worked with individually with an A probably probably close to 500 coaches now. I’ve got four and a half 1000 on the newsletter, 600,000, my facebook group, our people here, they’re all they’re all struggling. Now you have to say, Well, if they weren’t struggling, they wouldn’t be in your Facebook group or coming to you for advice or whatever. Of course, I understand that this report, it wouldn’t what’s happened over the last year that had been significant tap. So so until about a week ago, something’s happening with the Facebook algorithm will tell that we’re asking about and what I started to notice about a year ago, 18 months ago, when I looked at the because I look at every profile to make sure they’re not marked in line with the questions. There’s so many people, ex hotel manager, for former boss staff here, whatever people are clearly loss of jobs from COVID. So we’ve gone from an industry that was pretty saturated as it was to one that’s just been, I don’t know what the next step up from saturation is Ted, very sad. saturated. So there’s all these people that have been thinking that maybe had friends told him that they could be a coach, or they’d read about coaching the gear? Well, let’s do that. Because the bar to entry, if there isn’t one, if you’ve got the intention of home, the bar to success is very high, but the bar to entry that there is more anybody can call themselves a coach and just set up. So so the it’s got even worse, because the training companies are selling a lie that is the fastest growing industry where Yes, it is but with coaches, you know, in the anybody can do it for 12 hours a week, and nobody can, you know, it’s just, there’s just so much bs out there. It’s frightening to be honest

 

13:03

with you. So Tim, what’s the right way for one to actually establish themselves as life coach? How can they learn their fundamentals properly?

 

13:09

Well, the first answer is slowly. The people that scare me that come to me I had a lady was probably it’s just before we move back to the UK, so it’s probably about a year ago now. And, and she had to be shared to 150k in the first year, because she worked in real estate. Although now I think she should probably be better in real estate. That’s difficult if you’re doing it online. So I think we have to separate Are you going to work online or offline? Are you going to combine the two, the quickest way to succeed as a coach is not online, is to get offline is to pick your phone or is to call

 

13:46

people meet people in person know,

 

13:48

do you know anybody that could benefit from my services? If so, give me the number, you know, and I can if I can use your name, and then you call them so you just call people you meet as many people as you can, because whereas I can probably meet, you know, 100 people in an hour online in some way, shape or form with social media, it unless they already know me, it’s very difficult to build rapport quickly on social media, it’s much easier to do in person, when you’re chatting with somebody, you can you can sort of get a sense three two ways with it, you know, like and trust somebody. So I would say that’s if you’re going to do quickly, forget about your online presence to begin with and focus everything offline. Go to as many meetings offered to give free talks, as always organizations like Rotary Club and lions and Chamber of Commerce that want free speaker and just get yourself in front of as many people as possible. If you do an online

 

14:41

investment, you can sharpen your skills, right,

 

14:43

exactly. You get better you get and it’s not just like public speaking and teaching as well. And I’ve done both. To really teach yourself a topic to really start you think you know something until you have to explain it to somebody else, you know, and then it becomes like

 

14:59

this. Yes, when you realize when you understand this Exactly, yeah.

 

15:03

So if somebody is going to do it online, exclusively online, unless you’ve got a lot of money to plow into social media, advertising, and even more to hire somebody that knows what they’re doing, because a really big mistake that seed coaches making is trying to do their own Facebook advertising. The reality is, you’re up against people who would just do that for a living. So Brooke Castillo owns the life coach, school librarian interview with her not long ago, I listened to an interview, she spends 100 grand a year on Facebook advertising. Now, she’s gonna be fairly dialed in to the process, the people who do it for understand it, when a coach comes in, you think well, I pay for that. So it’ll go in front of me. No, no, it doesn’t work like that. You know, it’s a skill. So they put money into Facebook advertising. So if you’ve got 10 grand, and you can afford to write it off, if it doesn’t work, there’s going to be element to testing, then you know, that’s fine. If not, you’ve got to give yourself 12 months online, Google isn’t sat around waiting for you to put a website up. Nobody cares. I actually think in this day and age, you better have a new website than a bad website, at least no website, you can look sort of almost mysterious, just have a LinkedIn profile. So that is like, No, I don’t believe it that way. If you’re a bad website, it’s not going to turn people off immediately. It takes time to index you actually lose credibility by that. But yeah, I see. And Ted about a couple of times a year, you say, I’ll ask people in the Facebook group, it first 2025 people, I’ll do an audit of their website from a from a conversion standpoint, and some of them are look at, I’m almost weeping, you know, I just kind of want to say, just tear this yourself from scratch. This is never there’s nothing I can tell you. Because he’s so fundamentally flawed, right from the, you know, the base up.

 

16:56

Yeah, I understand where you’re coming from, you know, some of these sites, you take yourself seriously, you’re trying to provide a professional service and trying to convince someone to work with you. And it looks like that, no one’s gonna trust you or want to work with you based on

 

17:09

your design your life coach and do your own website. If you’re not a designer, you’re going to end up with a website that looks like it was designed by a life coach. So I wouldn’t want that.

 

17:19

So guy says Tim has shared having a bad website is actually more detrimental to your business or your personal brand. And having no website or so of course, it’s important to have a good website. But if you don’t have the technical skills, at this point in time to get a friend to help you, or maybe get a web developer from one of the gig economy websites like Fiverr, and Upwork, you’ll be surprised it could actually be quite affordable to engage these freelancers. But the most important point is make sure that your website is professional so we can put you and your business in a good light. So Tim, you shared earlier on that you took about three years before you actually had a proper stable coaching business. And earlier on you so shared that it takes about 12 months to build a proper online presence. So I think the idea I would like for you to speak a little bit more about is that anyone who wants to actually be a life coach, better be prepared to have money in the bank to tie to this period, especially since it’s so hard to get paying clients in this industry.

 

18:11

Yeah, definitely. I mean, have money in the bank, if you need that money, if you’ve got a partner, and the partner can subsidize you or you can live on his or her wages, then that’s fine. You know, get into it. If you need to be making money to put food on the table, then this is not around. This is not an industry to dive into things. Yeah, there’s there’s other industry, you know, at the moment, and I think it’s the same in the US as it is in the UK, you can get a job driving a van everybody shelter drivers, you know, because that’s exploded. There’s loads of jobs out there and do that. And do you know, meet this, you know, part time thing to begin with, as you start to build in establish yourself plus, is getting comfortable coaching, getting comfortable with your marketing as well. I definitely get rich. I’ve toyed with using the tagline of get clients slowly because it is a slow process. And I’ve gone back and forth on it because I’m just not quite sure. People aren’t I need clients quickly.

 

19:12

No, Tim, there was another point that you shared. You said that earlier on in your career, you spent a lot of time writing blog posts and doing guest postings. Now, as you recall, in a recent article, you wrote that an article that you wrote about 12 years ago is still giving you fresh leads even to this day. So I think there’s a lot to be said about a compounding benefits of good quality content.

 

19:33

Right. Exactly. And, and, you know, like the compound effect, sort of metaphor, and you’re absolutely right, it does because there is content decay with older posts, so they will slide at some point, although I think the post you’re referring to I don’t know if I mentioned it, that I wrote a post called self development for kids that ranked self development for kids that number one for at least 10 years. I think it has Now I’ve not looked for a while back 10 years because it will use an exact match, you know, URL for people type it type conduct in. So it’s useful, but But yeah, content. And the other thing with content that a lot of people have been blogging, don’t understand that you can do so I’ve got a post. It’s now I think, 30 self Dione books every life coach should read. And he started off as 12, I think, so that once a year, I’ll go back into it. I’ll rewrite parts of it, I’ll add some more books, change the title, change the publication date, resubmit it through Google Search Console to Google, so it recalls it, and read and then re publish it. Because so those four and a half 1000 people my newsletter list to my open rates about 20%. So there’s always 80% of not read what I’ve sent out anyway, pluses new people coming on, and people dropping off from what have you. So if you’ve written something good, and it’s evergreen, don’t just leave it to rot. You know, if I wanted to work with kids, I would go straight back into that post and rewrite it like, you’ve got to leave the permanent line, you know, the URL was saying, unless you redirect, not Otherwise, it’ll just screw up everything, and then re publish it and Google things. Or you just put self help book kids in 2022. So that’s a great trick to fill Google, it works out, I can always get to the last two years have been life, life coach industry in 2020. And then 2021, I’ll do it again. I’ll go and change it for 2022 and get back to the top for that. It’s, it’s a trick that I don’t see many coaches do into that niche to niche.

 

21:40

So Tim, can you share how you made the transition from being a life coach to being a coach that teaches life coaches?

 

21:45

Yeah, so it kind of it was by accident, I never really intended. So sometime around about, I guess, 2011 or so I started to get coaches approached me. And I think that was because I actually got onto the first page of Google for the term life coach, like three times around about then and the traffic. Yeah, I was getting 1500 unique visitors a day to the site, I got over 10,000 people on that newsletter list. And Coach can see this. And so I said, Well, you know, would you show me what you’ve done? So I’d be like, Yeah, and I just really enjoyed it. Because it allowed me you were talking before about what coaching is about pure coaching or collective coaching. When I’m working with coaches, I don’t have to stick to that model. If you said to me, Tim, I’ve got this great idea for SEO, I’m going to put this keyword in 100 times in the article. And it’s going to rank well, I believe, now telecom does keyword stuffing, Google will jump on you for it being over optimized, and you’re never going to get that. So there’s that way you can do it. Where this isn’t a subjective opinion, this is an objective fact. So I like that ability to say, you know, let’s try this, or you know, this will work or that won’t work, as well as doing the more sort of subtle stuff in terms of trying to break down people’s beliefs that they can’t make it happen, and so on and so forth. So got more and more people. And I noticed, probably within a year, my workload was split down the middle because I was tended to choose to enjoy work with the coaches more so rarely turn in a coach away. Whereas on with motor business on a daring adventure, I would be like, you know what, I’m not really. And it started split. So then I launched a website, I think it was 2013, coach, life coach launched, and then aware, and I still do a daring adventure still live, although I think I’m going to sell some of the site, the domain, but I still do get inquiries from that and do take on the odd client. If I recently finished working with a guy who got a startup in the USA, high tech, business loved working with it, because it’s just a real high achiever. I love working with people like that. But it kind of morphed into it. And now I just say I work with coaches bought the only downside now is the industry’s got flooded with coaches working with coaches, many of whom are doing it because they couldn’t succeed as a coach themselves, and now they’re selling their, you know, they that I just don’t get me on that tape because it just frustrates me so much that you know, like effortless referrals, your business will explode. No, stop there.

 

24:35

Yeah, I know what you mean. I get those emails as well. And you’re so annoying. Yeah. So Tim, could you share some of the common issues that the life coaches who approach you need help with? Of course, being a good coach is a given but let’s talk about the other skill sets that you can actually come in to help them with in terms of their practice.

 

24:51

Well, I think I say this is a very general statement. Most coaches are better at coaching. Do you think and not as good at marketing as you think? So I think for new coaches, they come into the industry. And I, I’ve met loads of coaches that have spent five figures on training, and didn’t have a marketing budget. I’m one of them. I spent about 15, grand on on coaching on coach training and open source. When I first started, didn’t really think about the marketing. My my theory was that if I’m just really good at coaching, people will find, yeah, more more. Why?

 

25:37

You know, Tim, what surprises me is that you yourself actually came from the marketing and sales industry. But you had a kind of mindset as well, when you first started as a life coach. Yes. Quite sobering.

 

25:46

It’s ridiculous. Yeah. He said, and I wrote a blog post over 10 years ago now with the title. If you build it, they won’t come talking about coaches starting and just basically thinking I put a website and that’s what I thought, whoa, so websites out there, come on, then I’m ready. Who wants me? crickets tumble wages. Yeah. And that went on for a little while. So I think it’s, it’s coming in unprepared of how hard it is to get clients. You better coming in and I get told me because I’m battered this message to my list at least once every couple of weeks, I’ll put in something about it being hard. And every now and then I’ll get an email back from somebody else, somebody else. unsubscribe, and they’ll leave a comment saying too negative. But But here’s the thing, tell if something if I tell you the industry is really hard. And you and you, you decide not to become a coach, and I’ve crushed your dream? Well, I’ve just really favor I’ve just saved you. If you give off that easily, because Tim bramson some dude, some bold, no pasty white dude from from England said that you decided to quit on your dream, then it was genuine of you like Yeah, exactly, you’re in the wrong industry. To start with, you’re gonna have to find something where nobody else exists, and people will pay you for it. So you know, I think you better think he’s gonna be really hard, I think being a little bit less hard than thinking is going to be easy. And then suddenly, Wallach, you know, it’s that you have Seth Godin second dimension, he talks about the debt, where you set off with all this enthusiasm, and maybe pick up a couple of clients to start with. And then suddenly, there’s that debt process where it’s just slightly enthusiasm starts to ebb. And you start to realize this is a business, I think that it’s treating it as a business and not a hobby, you know, because because it is you’re walking into a super, super competitive industry, and you’re gonna get swallowed up if you don’t understand how to market and sell your service.

 

27:45

So it’s in this circle back to the point we spoke earlier about how the industry is in really regulated at the moment. So I know that there ICF equations, and you’ve written about your views on it, can you share with us your views, and this for the listeners at home, and maybe you could also share some tips on how you can tell a good coach, my bad one?

 

28:02

I mean, it’s tough. First of all, I said, if somebody has got the ICF accreditation, then I’m not again, I’m just against the ICF the amount of money they charge and the way you have to hire ICF coaches afterwards, this ongoing thing,

 

28:16

wrote an article about how it seems like a pyramid scheme

 

28:18

does really, it’s like questioning where it is, because I know there’s coaches, and I have to be careful what I said, but I know there’s coaches that can only keep going as coaches because of the work they get from the ICF, which seems to be that’s like a classic pyramid scheme, almost. Yeah, I see that. But I think for you, if you see somebody that’s got an ICF, then the gonna be a competent coach, you can’t bluff your way through the ICF training. And it’s usually 18 months, you know, you’ve got to, you’ve got to provide examples of your teaching, and there’s no real exam, and so on and so forth. So, so that would be a good starting point for me. If that’s absent, which is with Bobby 95% of coaches, so then then I would be looking at testimonials, body of work, how long have they been doing that, you know, somebody went on to a down adventure, if they can see I started blogging in 2006. You know, that will, the gun must be kind of okay, unless he’s sat on an inheritance. And, you know, I’m not, by the way, if you’ve got one, and I’ll take it, and sit on it. And so so your body of work, testimonials, don’t just look at the testimonials. I haven’t been on websites where I’ve seen fake testimonials from coaches, and I’ve known them to be fake and asked to speak to people. You know, I will often offer that do you want to speak with anybody I’m working with now I did this last week for les Yes, in law. I’ve got a client at the moment, which is a very, very similar position to you to want to speak with it. And she did so put me in touch. And she didn’t hire me. So I have no idea. I’m kidding. I’m not. So yeah, I think that’s all he can do. You And go on, don’t be afraid. And I used to say to people, I have said, I wouldn’t say to everybody, go and talk to a couple of other coaches, and then go with a person, go with your gut, don’t if anybody tells you, you’ve got it, you’ve got to tell them now, get off the phone call, put your wallet down, gone, put it in a block of ice or something where you can’t get to it just back on any coach walk away if the if they’re a decent coach and ethical coach. So think about it, and go with the one that you got instinctively that I really think I could get on with this person. Because you have to like, coach, yeah, you’ve read some of my stuff, Ted, you know, I use a lot of humor. If I tell a joke on a console call and it goes stony silence, I’m already thinking don’t want to work this person because I don’t want to have to rein in my humor. Because it’s so important to me. I can’t go a day without watching. So Ken’s

 

30:51

pointing the way that you will coach them as well. Right, right. Did that chemistry as well?

 

30:55

Exactly, you’ve got Yeah, you gotta like your coaches, coaches gonna like you and be pulling for you. In all my years, I think I’ve worked with maybe four people who I actually really didn’t like when they got to know them. And that kind of backed out of each one of those, actually one of them fire. But the only time I’ve ever been fired by coach, because I told him he needed to take on 2% responsibility said he refused to take more than 70% at it. He was a face to face class, he says, well, you’re fired, and then just walked out my house. And I never saw him again.

 

31:25

Wow, what a story live. So guys, as Tim has shared chemistry, and trust is such important ingredients to actually have a good relationship with a person or to convince someone to work with you. So do be very aware as to the impact that testimonials and reviews can have on your business. Now one great tip that Tim shared is to actually offer your clients to speak with your existing or past clients to get a real sensing as to your services in what you are like to work with your past and existing clients can be really strong advocates for you, and convince your new clients to work with you. So Tim, let’s speak a little bit about a book that you wrote called the clarity method. What is the Book about? And what do you hope to achieve with it? Well, the

 

32:07

book is about core values, basically. So when I originally wrote it, I first wrote it, it was called aligning with your core values back in about 2008, or nine. And core values are just something that I’ve always been, like super passionate about, I mentioned, the manager that I had, that really made a difference advise me to go into coaching, he was always values based. So what’s really important, not goals, your goals are fine. But goals need to be underpinned by your values, you know, what, what are the kinds of things that you will die for? Not necessarily literally, but you know, figuratively. So I started to notice that as I took client, I was taught to core values method that I adapted, and to change it quite a lot over the years, I was constantly playing about with it. And I noticed that pretty much all my major breakthroughs with clients were coming on this second session when I got into core values people are, so that’s why I like that. That’s why I do that. That’s why I don’t get on with that person. So it just became like, just super important to me. And then I when I started working with the coaches, a couple of people I think, asked me, anybody listen to this, he’s gonna think this guy had to look along his way. And I think I probably have, well, you need to have a couple coaches asked me to show them how to use it. And they really liked it. So I changed the book to basically to being more coaches and managers in the workplace. So that thinking back to my manager, how could you use this? How could you have this as like a template to use with, with employees to really understand what motivates him because we know that your money is a poor one to motivate you is pretty much what the sales industry exists on. So what how can we get people sort of basically motivated and engaged and wanting to do this? And if we put the money to one side, I mean, that’s always going to be important. So with the clarity method was relaunched it was, it was actually 2019. It came out in 2019. But it’s more aimed at coaches. So I used to teach it when I teach the coach training.

 

34:27

So you actually really niche down into providing the book for coaches.

 

34:30

Yeah. And I have thought, you know, it is something I’m so passionate about. And I’ve given a lot of interviews around core values in the book. You know, I blew the launch. I made a critical mistake on the launch of the book, which is I wouldn’t say it haunts me, but you know, it talks about the soul. Okay. Well, basically, the lady I had hired to help me off up work and she done a number of book launches. She sent me an email and said we want 50 people to do reviews on Amazon. So we did the launch, and we put it up at 99 cents, didn’t tell anybody. And then said we want 50 people to do reviews at Amazon. So I contacted 50 people or contacted bunch of people got 50 people said they do them. And then on the launch day 16 or 17 reviews went up. what she meant is we need 50 confirmed. She said he’d not you’d probably have to ask too young to pee. Oh, I see. I see. I didn’t do it. So it’s a bit complicated, but I didn’t really comment on what was going on for a while, you know? And she said, Yeah, so we only had 16 reviews go up when the book actually published. Now, anybody that’s watched the board can I’m sure you know, even if you haven’t launched a book that that first week is just super critical. The first day is really, you’re playing catch up if you don’t do it, then. So the book sold? Well, in total, it sold about 80 grands worth. But it could have any still, you know it trickles out now, but it could have done. Yeah, I genuinely believe any coach could benefit from reading. It’s just such a cool process. I still use it now with coaches, you know, to help me understand them better. And there really isn’t. And this is what prompted the writing First, there really isn’t anything authoritative out there on core values. And this should be because it’s so integral to who we are as people, it dictates everything we do, how we think and what you don’t get been happy in my view. And yet, it doesn’t really get discussed a lot goals do 1000 book out books out there were goals. But if your goals aren’t values driven, they’re not really going to fail you. I bet you know, some serial goal setters, they’ll set a goal. They’ll hit it and I know that’s all right, obviously wasn’t big enough, they’ll set another one. But yeah, because it’s driven by value the

 

37:02

hamster wheel right? You’re always chase yes thing, but you’re exactly if you are fulfilled or the everyday investor does

 

37:11

not value driven, you know, but if you have a goal of say, setting up a, you know, a hospital in I don’t know, Afghanistan doubt people, you know, from the recent troubles. Well, you know, I said values driven goal that’s going to give you satisfaction as you move through every stage of the process may say, Well, I you know, I’ve got a, I’ve got a goal of buying a new iMac, which I seem to have anyway, because I’m a hypocrite every two years. You know, it’s like you get it, yes, an iMac. And it works. And it’s fine. And I’m talking to Ted on it now. But guess what, you know, doesn’t give me really any, you know, that deep feeling of worth?

 

37:49

I understand. I understand. So Tim, here’s my next question. The listeners only remember one thing from today’s conversation, while you’d like it to be,

 

37:58

well, I think it’s a part of my book. But if it’s a coach, if they’re a coach and say, dive into marketing, just learn marketing, hire help, I don’t necessarily mean me, you know, get help. Like I said, at the beginning, I’ve worked with seven coaches, I have no problem. hiring somebody to because to me, I see it as a shortcut. And it can save me a lot of time. And actually, I didn’t do it for a year. Well, I said it took me about three years, the really the tipping point was me, Hi, my own coach, that wasn’t just a life coach, I had a business coach. So just just get help. One of the things in my facebook group that frustrates me is is 6000 people in there. And I regularly say, look, if you want help with something, ask tag me and I’ll help you. But people seem reluctant. I was the kid that just never got him back saying you know, if I if I don’t know something immediately, I’m trying to research it cuz I hate not knowing I’ll ask. So you’ve got. So that’s the takeaway. That will be the takeaway. Ask people ask people for their help. If you don’t understand something, don’t you’re not stupid. Everything I know, our wants didn’t know we were all in that situation will be stuff I don’t know. Now that I will know in a year’s time. So ask, and then but yeah,

 

39:20

maybe try to ask some thoughtful questions, do some research. And before you actually come in, ask him your questions. Right. Yeah, I

 

39:27

mean, it just bugged me when people come in the group and the first question is, how do I get clients? You know that that’s kind of like Well, come on, you know, do something get a little bit make it a little bit. So yes, yeah. I’m glad you clarified that.

 

39:42

So Tim, how can our listeners get in contact with you if they need your help?

 

39:46

To get back to go to coach life coach calm. I am on social media, but I tend to apart from my facebook group, and they can find me on LinkedIn and say hello to it’s just a LinkedIn My name too. Tim bramson twitter address use for being stupid and telling jokes and, and trolling Trump when he was on. Yeah, yeah, no, don’t don’t take NSA too seriously. I’m very tongue in cheek and I only a part of my group, I tend to use Facebook just for communicating with friends and sharing stuff more heavier which, which from a business standpoint is not wise I would do better if I opened it up to coaches. But yeah, so so just go to the website, something newsletter, then come and join my facebook group. That will be great.

 

40:31

Oh, right now, Tim, thanks so much for joining us today. It’s been such a pleasure to have you here. Likewise, it was a pleasure talking to you, Ted. Thank you. So guys, thank you so much for joining Tim and I in today’s conversation. While this episode was really focused on life coaching industry, I’m sure that there are many tips that could apply to any industry in the world, Tim really focused on the importance of marketing for new life coaches. And this actually applies universally to any business. So have a think about your website. Is it well designed? Is it badly designed, it is badly designed and have a think about how we can improve this because this could be costing you sales at the moment. And remember, it’s always good to build up your reviews and testimonials to help develop trust with your prospective clients. And of course, if your prospective clients have any doubts is a good idea to try to refer them to your existing clients or past clients. Let them have this conversation. And this is a great way to let them have a greater idea of what it is like to work with you. So guys, if you enjoyed today’s episode, and you’d like to show your support, and don’t forget to subscribe, leave a review and share this with somebody who will find it useful as well. And as a way to say thank you to you guys. you subscribe and leave a review on Apple podcast but it ended September, then you may stand a chance to win $50 worth of gift vouchers from Amazon. one lucky winner will be chosen at the end of the month. That’s all for me today. I’ll see you next time.