Less is More?
Are you giving too much away in your bid to help and serve others?
Do you ever get themes? By themes I mean ideas, phrases, topics, and comments that come up again and again for you in independent situations and from unconnected (other than by you) people? Please tell me that you do? I need to know it’s not just me.
I’ve often found in coaching work that similar issues will come up with different clients all around the same time and sometimes they will also be things I am thinking about and working on myself. I’m not sure if it’s something like the 100th monkey effect or just that coincidences are inevitable at some points?
Anyhow, when they arise you notice. Five unconnected people give you the same book recommendation, several people suggest the same business idea to you or you find yourself having numerous conversations of which the theme is that less is more, even if it is not explicitly stated, as has happened with me this week.
It started on a podcast recording with Chris Ducker of YouPreneur fame. We were discussing how so many people are giving too much away. Chris told me about when he first met Pat Flynn and how Pat wasn’t making much money because he was giving too much away, not charging enough and probably wondering why it wasn’t working. Well, if you follow Pat these days, that is certainly no longer the case although he has clearly never lost his desire to serve people.
It came up again on my coaching swap call with my buddy James, at which point I exclaimed that this would be the topic of my blog this week! (I love it when that happens.) We were talking about giving too much effort and energy to things that no one really seems to care about and not seeing any return for it. We also discussed how it really isn’t that hard to go the extra mile and how few people ever do. (Possibly the theme for next week?)
It came up in several podcast recordings and again in my incubator group accountability hangout. This time it came up because I was the one doing it, giving too much away with my plans for live webinars. Wanting to teach too much, give all the magic away early on rather than whetting the appetites of the audience for my own courses and coaching and still giving plenty of magic and value to those who show up and even to those who do not.
Chloe Ducker pointed out to me that when her dad (Chris) stopped giving away too much for free there were many people who still contacted them after events feeling entitled to things like free replays, even though those were advertised as only being available to people who paid an upgrade fee. It took a while to enforce these new and healthier boundaries and for them to become the norm in their business. I would never imagine myself asking Chris or Chloe for freebies, but perhaps because they do it the right way now.
These themes seem to arise for a reason and there always seems to be something to learn and take away from them, which for me is that I often make life too hard for myself by trying to do more than is required. I want to be the guy who gives away high-level stuff because there’s plenty more. I want to be the guy who is really giving incredible value to the people who actually show up to learn and yet, there is a way to do that which maintains healthy boundaries and doesn’t leave you feeling like the whole farm was just repossessed by the bank.
I’m not a fan of the expression keep it simple stupid, just so we can get the acronym KISS. I don’t think calling ourselves stupid, even in jest, is positive self talk. I can work with keep it stupidly simple. It’s a little pedantic perhaps but I feel a little more self-honouring. All that aside, it is surprising how often we don’t. We make more work for ourselves than need be and perhaps end up setting ourselves up for failure in the process. Maybe an inner saboteur?
We’ve been fairly well conditioned to give, give again and give some more but much as in my recent writings about people trying to be everywhere and do everything on social media, giving too much away for free is a recipe for burnout, frustration and being broke. My friend Harv Eker says you can’t help broke people by being one of them.
To expand on that further, in my many years of coaching I have coached many other coaches. My initial resistance to this was always that it seemed at some point coaching would eat itself, but that seems not to have happened. An issue I encounter time and time again is hard-working, heart-centred coaches who really want to serve and make a difference wondering why they were not. In the majority of cases it came down to one of two things; either they were not niching their services or they were niched towards people who could not afford to pay for their services. Both are pretty good ways to stay broke.
I want to give you some golden advice that it has taken me years to learn and fully realise, which is that the more you decide who you are not for, the clearer who you are for becomes. I heard Chris Ducker on his own podcast talking about marketing like a magnet, that a magnet both attracts and repels. We want to repel the wrong people for us as much as we attract the right people. We need to stop being diplomatic, stop worrying about everyone liking you and stop undervaluing yourself and your services.
I’m about to niche down on who my podcast is serving. It’s a little scary for me but it’s going to be in alignment with who my book, this blog, my Facebook group, my coaching and my online course are aimed towards. I don’t know how this will work out but I have good reason to believe it will reap benefits and that makes it exciting as well as scary. I think that’s a good place to be. I’m guarding against giving away too much for free and am lucky to have great coaches and a great mastermind group to help keep me on the path. I recommend you also get support if you need to do the same.
Stop giving away the farm and thinking you have to be for everyone. If you really want to help as many people as possible, help a specific group of people get what they want, you will then get more of what you want and you will be better positioned to help those who can’t yet afford high-end products and services. If you’re looking to become a key person of influence with podcasts, books or speaking events you’d better have something specific and relevant to offer people which helps them get what they want.
I can’t tell you how good it feels as a business owner to be bringing all of my offerings into alignment instead of being like spaghetti thrown at a wall to see what sticks. I know who I am helping and how. I’m getting clearer and clearer all the time and it’s been a slog for me as someone who has been privileged to be supplied with clients for generalist coaching for over 10 years. I also know that I am not going to get fed up doing this because I actively want to be living, breathing and sleeping podcasts and podcasting.
Being for fewer people means getting more attention from those you are serving, even if that feels counterintuitive. This also means you don’t have to work so hard, you don’t need to be everywhere and you will feel that your output is more effective with less effort. It’s much less work to serve a clear and specific group of people and the results are very often the difference between scraping by or becoming a 6, 7 or 8 figure business owner. Less=more.
If you want some help thinking about niching, making podcasts a part of your professional offerings or building professional authority with podcasts, get in touch. You can book a free 15-minute chat with me where I will hopefully be able to either help you or point you in the right direction. You can book that here: https://calendly.com/presentinfluence/15-discover-coaching
I know I’m not Tim Ferris and probably far fewer people care about these things, but they’re fun to share and hopefully helpful to you…
What I’m reading: Your Business, Your Book by Ginny Carter. It’s one of the best books I’ve read on how to start, finish and market your own business book, delivered in a light, edutaining style that makes it a joy to read. I interviewed Ginny this week and you can hear the results of that chat soon. We had a lot of fun.
What I’m watching: Hacks on HBO Max. Hacks is a dryly funny female-led comedy about an older stand-up comedienne (who seems a bit like a cross between the late Joan Rivers and the late Debbie Reynolds) who ends up being paired with a younger comedy writer where they clash in styles and ideas but still find ways to bond. Its writing team includes Micahel Schur of The Good Place fame and is well worth a watch for its terrific first season.
What I’m listening to: Jordan Harbinger is one of my favourite podcasters and often has great guests on his show. His show is frequently high up in Apple Podcast charts and others too. His latest interview episode is with Daniel J. Levetin about how to think critically in this post-truth era. It’s a fascinating listen that helps us to understand how hard it is to let go of beliefs even in the face of disconfirming evidence and also that falling victim to logical fallacies does not mean we are stupid. Honestly, I think it’s essential listening.
I mentioned Chris Ducker a fair amount in this conversation, with him being one of my current mentors and a recent podcast guest, that seems OK. If you haven’t yet heard my chat with Chris from last week, you can take a listen here.
If you’ve read my blog before, you know I like to leave you with a song for the weekend. I had a song in mind but then this song with the same name showed up in my search results and as much as I did not like the movie of The Greatest Showman, there were certainly a few great songs from it, of which this is one. Watch the original singer get the recognition she richly deserves and just try not getting goosebumps as she sings this. All the feels for you this week.
