Change begins with community
If you want to attract premium clients, selling won’t work. You have to show why someone should buy from you.
Sure, a high-end customer might be ready to pay, and they may want to commit long-term. Why? Because they trust you. They’ve watched you regularly show up and prove that what you say and do align.
Want better clients? Consistently demonstrate you’re worth investing in.
Is coaching worth the investment?
Coaches can be the spark plug you need to move towards goals and become more aware of sabotaging patterns. A trained coach holds you accountable, charts your progress, and cheers as you make professional and personal strides. But how do you know which coach is right for you?
Before you choose to enlist a coach for extra support, get clear on the help you’ll receive. Research your coach’s background, training, and past success. Many coaches offer a complimentary session before you commit to working with them. Use that time to better understand the training and offerings of this professional. Here are a few questions you can start with:
Have you worked with other professionals in my industry?
Do you have a process for your work with clients?
How would you describe your coaching style?
What can I do to get the most out of our time together?
What is the most common struggle you see with clients?
Tell me about a time you helped a client and felt proud of their progress.
Do you provide outside resources — books, podcasts, worksheets?
Have you worked with a coach? Let me know @redheadlefthand.
When I changed industries — from social work to advertising — I was skeptical. Why would an international branding agency want to hire me, a M.S.W. (social work) graduate from Columbia?
They did, and here’s why:
Empathy.
They knew I could question: How to analyze behavior and communities, how to look for factors that contribute to the way in which someone sees the world; how to start conversations to learn how people see themselves.
This is marketing.
As part of my social work degree, I had two clinical internships. For the second, I was placed in the counseling clinic of an all-girls college. My experiences prior to this was with drug and alcohol addicts, youth on probation, middle school students. Yet now I was playing the role of therapist in a clean office, listening to educated young women talk about their anxieties and frustrations.
These women had resources. They had money and options and opportunities. Yet their worries were the same as those kids on probation and the middle schoolers who walked up flights of dark stairs in Section 8 housing to go home.
Will he/she love me?
Will my family be proud of me?
What should I do for work?
Since then I’ve worked with Buddhist monks and young leaders in Nepal. Our yearnings are largely the same, but our resources are not.
If we fail to recognize these differences as marketers, we have no chance of winning.
I believe we can use this same awareness to create incredible marketing campaigns — and a better world.
Which audience will I care about?
Who do I want to impact?
Which traits do I want to develop?
It’s fun to think about what you’re creating. Sometimes it can be difficult to pause and consider who you’re really designing for.
Before you get too involved, too excited, too invested in your project, take time to think about your intended audience:
What do they want?
What do they need?
Where do they go?
You’ll save yourself a lot of headache by planning accordingly.
(What’s important to you might not be important to them.)
This Women’s Day, #choosetochallenge:
Challenge a woman to tell her story.
Challenge yourself to listen.
Challenge a friend to find confidence.
Challenge yourself to set a new goal.
This is how change happens — slowly, collectively.
This is how we build a kinder, more just world.
What is a pivot and why is it important? How do you navigate change and make the most of shifts, both unexpected and anticipated?
Listen here for a conversation on change, adaptation, and growth.