How I Nearly Ruined My Coaching Business

In 2021, I made an almost, fatal mistake.

I’d just come off two great years of growth, teaching a program called “Hidden Genius,” where I helped coaches sell high-ticket courses using their unique talents.

But what really lit me up was the deeper, inner work—helping clients examine their relationships with self-worth, judgment, money, risk, and so on.

So, I shifted my messaging.

I wanted to attract a more conscious entrepreneur.
But instead, I ended up with a business on life support.

Nothing worked—not doubling down on my efforts, not posting more content, not paid traffic, not even going back to my old messaging.

By the time I reached out to my mentor, I was desperate.

After assessing my situation, he gave me the blunt truth:

“You don’t have a marketing problem … you have an attention problem.”

I had unknowingly made three critical mistakes:

Mistake #1: Assuming that if it’s important to me, it’s important to my clients.

Messaging is the one part of your business that’s not about you.

Yes, you can do the work you love, but first, you have to meet your clients where they’re at—their pain, their needs, their fears.

Your passions will come later.

Mistake #2: Believing what worked on my warm audience would work on cold traffic.

Just to clarify, “cold” and “warm” refer to the level of trust your audience has with you. Most coaching businesses begin by serving past personal and professional networks where trust is high.

And therefore there’s more patience in understanding how your services solve their problems.

However, scaling requires reaching a new audience—one that doesn’t know or trust you.

And therefore has no patience to understand what you solve for them.

To build trust you must first grab attention— “What valuable problem do you solve for me?”

Make it clear, direct, and easy for them to connect the dots.

Mistake #3: Thinking clients will pay to solve inner problems.

One of the toughest lessons I learned was: “Most people don’t love themselves enough to pay your premiums.”

It’s much easier for clients to justify investing in tangible outcomes—fixing their revenue, improving a relationship, or resolving a health issue.

Start by solving the clear, external problem.

Then, educate them through your marketing about why the problem might be deeper.

Cheers to an easier road and not fumbling the bag, like I did. 

PS – Keep your eyes peeled. And the end of February I’m going to be launching a free course on how to write messaging that grabs attention and keeps it. Stay tuned.