How To Create a Coaching Package That Sells Itself - Cindy Schulson
Jul 02, 2021Tom Bailey, founder of Succeed Through Speaking, interviews Cindy Schulson.
Cindy Schulson shows coaches how to stand out in this noisy online world and enrol more High Value clients by marketing with heart vs. hype.
Cindy brings a decade of marketing experience working for such companies as Coca-Cola and Visa, combined with a decade of online marketing to create a paradigm shift in how marketing can be done with integrity and heart.
One of her greatest gifts is helping her clients sort through their “brain dump” of ideas so they can find the golden nuggets that make them shine in their own unique way.
Why you've got to check out Cindy's episode:
- Discover how Cindy helps coaches or consultants who have a foundation of success in their business and are moving from referrals and offline to online business. Also helping professionals transitioning into business.
- Understand the biggest challenges of having lack of clarity and why you need a solid gold foundation for your business before you go out and start taking action in your business.
- Why your niche, your message and your offer are the three key pillars that you need to have absolute clarity on before you launch your business.
- Learn the impact of not getting these foundations in place including investing in a lot of tactical programs, spinning your wheels, and ultimately chasing after glitter when you should really be going after gold.
- How to get access to Cindy's deep drive training on how to create a coaching package that sells itself.
Resources / Links
Transcript
Tom Bailey: Hello and welcome to Succeed Through Speaking the place for experts and entrepreneurs who want high value ideas to boost business results.
Hello, I'm Tom Bailey. And in today's episode, I'll be getting to know Cindy Schulson. Who's an experienced marketing expert and the founder of marketing from within. So, Cindy, hello, and a very warm welcome to today's episode.
Cindy Schulson: Thank you, Tom.
Tom Bailey: Thank you so much for being here and out of interest. Whereabouts are you right now?
Cindy Schulson: I am in San Diego, California. And if you hear a little Canadian accent, I grew up in Montreal so that I might show an alien everywhere. Yeah,
Tom Bailey: Absolutely. Feel free to do that. Thank you so much. And let's go share a little bit more about you before we do get started. So, Cindy shows coaches how to stand out in the noisy online world and enroll more high value clients by marketing with heart versus marketing hype. She also brings a decade of marketing experience after working for market leading companies like Coca-Cola and visa. The title for today's episode is How To Create a Coaching Package That Sells Itself. And Cindy is going to show us how to do that in just seven minutes. So, no pressure at all. Question number one today is who are your ideal clients?
Cindy Schulson: So, first of all, thank you for having me and my ideal clients are coaches or consultants who, as I like to say, have a foundation of success. It's either in their business. And now they're sort of going from referrals and offline to coming online or they have a foundation of success in their professional career and they want to figure out how to best leverage that in their business.
Tom Bailey: Okay. Perfect.
Cindy Schulson: So, track a lot of coaches and I'm sorry, lawyers, doctors, corporate people, that kind of thing.
Tom Bailey: Then I guess if anyone's listening to this episode in that, and they'd resonate with those categories of people, what would you say is the biggest challenge that they typically face?
Cindy Schulson: Number one hands down, lack of clarity and specifically what I teach above all Tom is how to create what I call a solid, bold strategic foundation for your business. And I think what happens for a lot of us is we just want to get into action and we start marketing before we have the clarity that we need. And there are three key things that we need clarity on. So, I don't know how much time we have. Just real quick summary, your niche, your message, and your offer are the three key pillars that you need to have super quick, super clarity on.
Tom Bailey: Absolutely. And I guess some of us are keen to run before we can walk when it comes to entrepreneurship and starting businesses. But if we do that without the solid foundations, what impact does that typically have on our businesses?
Cindy Schulson: What happens is we do a lot of marketing and we end up spinning our wheels. I've seen it over and over and over again. And this is what happens is that people will invest in these wonderful programs because the tactics sound exciting and it feels like the missing link. But if you do those tactics without really having that solid strategic foundation, you end up spinning your wheels. I call it chasing after glitter instead of focusing on the gold.
Tom Bailey: And I sometimes call it the revolving door of marketing strategies, because there's just another one after another one after another.
Cindy Schulson: And the thing is, is like, no matter, excuse me, no matter which marketing tactic you try, if you have a solid gold strategic foundation and total clarity, you'll get results. And no matter how wonderful that marketing tactic is, if you don't have that solid foundation, it's not going to work and I've seen it over and over again.
Tom Bailey: Yeah. Okay. So, let's say somebody has bought the hook and they want to get in and find out more. What's the one piece of advice that you'd give them to get started on this journey.
Cindy Schulson: So my motto in business is always build on success, right? So, we want to take things one step at a time. So, first of all, get let's just go back. I said the three pieces, the niche, the message and the offer. So, before we can create the marketing, we have to have clarity on those three things. We've already discussed that, but taking it back even one step further before we can create our offer or a message, we have to really be clear on who our ideal client is. What is the problem with help themselves? What is the result we help them achieve? If you don't have the clarity on those three things, you can't create your message and you can't create a compelling offer. So got to go back to the, to the very foundation, which most coaches, unfortunately just skim over or they think they're clear, but they're nowhere near as clear as they need to be.
Tom Bailey: Yep. Understood. And for somebody that does want to get on this journey, what resources or guides or what content can you share with them to help them get started?
Cindy Schulson: The niche. I think what I want to do to answer that question is because I want to skip over to the topic here, which is the coaching path, just to switch things up just a little bit. Okay. So, when we talk about a coaching package, what most coaches do is they basically sell their time or sell bundles of their time. And what that means is that you're selling something that's super intangible. So, what I teach my clients, how to do is create what I call a client journey and what that is, or the steps you take with your clients and the results you help them achieve at each step. And we need to be able to clearly communicate those steps and those results.
And when we do that, it takes this intangible thing called coaching and makes it super clear. So, our comp our clients are more confident when they can see the success path that they need to take to get results. And one last thing, if I may. Is that once you have that client journey, you can package it in different ways at different price points, different levels of access to you to earn multiple streams of income. And one more bonus tip Tom, is that when you're teaching your content in your marketing, you're actually going to teach your clients right. Because that's what allows you to add real value, but also position your services.
Tom Bailey: Yeah. Love it. Really, really important message. And do you have a URL where people can go to, to find out.
Cindy Schulson: Absolutely. So we're doing a really quick interview here, but I have a much more deep dive training on how to create a coaching package that sells itself. And you can just go to www.MarketingfromWithin.com/clientclients.
Tom Bailey: Fantastic. Thank you so much. That's I'll put that link into the show notes below this episode. So people can just click on that's www.MarketingfromWithin.com and jump right in. So, couple more questions from me than the first one's about you. And that question is what would you say is one of your greatest either mistakes or failures that you've made in life or in business? And what did you learn from it?
Cindy Schulson: I made the mistake that I'm talking about here today, which is why I'm so passionate about helping Joe to pivot. So, I've been, I first came online to start my coaching business in 2008. And I spent the first year and a half, two years completely spinning my wheels because I was lacking that strategic foundation. And I know how painful it is when you're doing all this work and trying every marketing tactic under the sun and getting absolutely nowhere. I also made the mistake of not looking at how I could leverage my past experience and apply it in a way I was passionate about, I had 10 years of strategic communications experience and in that year and a half, I never once thought about how to leverage that in my business.
Tom Bailey: Yeah, of course. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's really important. And you know, we learned a lot of lessons along the way, so it's really about taking action on those lessons and really applying them to your success as well. So last question from me today is what is the one question that I should have asked you today that will also give some great value to our audience?
Cindy Schulson: Well, that's a good one. I don't know if it's going to add value, but I'll just come to my mind anyway. My biggest pet peeve about the coaching industry. I think we all have them, right. So, my biggest pet peeve about the coaching industry is how we had this conception that. We have to like scale to these huge businesses. And I think scaling is really important, but I also think there's a way to do that without sacrificing the level of support that you offer your clients. Got it. That's our clients are investing in us because they want our help creating a transformation. And that transformation only happens when there's meaningful support. So, I just want you to know there's hybrid ways of providing coaching, training, and support that allow you to scale while also allowing you to get your clients amazing.
Tom Bailey: Fantastic. I'm sure our listeners would love to find out more about that so they can head on over to your website, which will be the link in the show notes. And they can find out more about that as well. So, Cindy, thanks again so much for your time today. I really appreciate you coming along to share some great value with that audience.
Cindy Schulson: Thank you, Tom. I appreciate it. Thanks again.
