Can you give away too much as a coach or consultant?

Can you give away too much as a coach or consultant?

Can you give away too much? This is a question I get all of the time-on social media and speaking engagements, from my clients. How much is too much to give away for free? 

Sadly, most people’s advice on this is either so vague that you’re left feeling unsure and questioning every move you make, which is no fun at all. Or, even worse, they give you flat out BS and say-you can never give away too much. Spoiler alert: you absolutely can give away too much, and you need to stop that right now. 

Happily, I have got a genius trick to settle this question once and for all so that you can move on to more essential and entertaining parts of your business, like say, increasing your impact and your income. 

If we haven’t met before, I’m Wendy White, Messaging Strategist for coaches and consultants who are ready to become thought leaders. Every Wednesday, I’m sharing messaging strategies and tips and tutorials to master that unique brand message that you need if you want to pull away from that pack of cookie cutter entrepreneurs. Today, I’m answering the question: can you give away too much? 

So I promised a genius trick and here it is, the solution is to draw a bright line between your coaching and your consulting work and your marketing. So what’s the difference? Well, really it’s the purpose behind them. 

Your coaching, your consulting-this is your actual work where you help your paying clients actually get that significant life or business transformation. That’s the purpose of that work. Your marketing on the other hand, while you may teach them, you may help them, that’s not the purpose. The purpose is to entice your audience to come closer and then to move onto the next step with you, whatever that next step is. 

So here’s how that difference shows up for you. It’s not necessarily in the actual content you provide, you could be covering the same lessons behind your paywall or in your marketing. Where the difference is, is really in your attitude. Your state of mind, how you approach this, okay? Your marketing always needs to leave your audience wanting more and you need to invite them to that next step. Does that make sense? Excellent. 

All right, now that we have that bright line between your coaching and consulting and your marketing, here are my rules for each. Never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever give away your coaching and consulting work for free. 

We talked about this a few months ago in our Start, Small. Start Now workshop. Even if you’re at the beginning of a new service or a new business or a new direction, and you want to put out an unpaid test offer to try it out and see what happens, you are never putting it out for free. There is always an exchange of value for value. Otherwise, you end up with a whole bunch of freebie zombies and you will resent them and get burned out. And we don’t want that, right. So coaching and consulting-never, ever for free.

Marketing, however, as long as you treat it as, as marketing, as you approach it as marketing, you don’t need to hold back. If you have this right attitude about it., so you make sure that you number one, leave them wanting more and number two, invite them to the next step. If you do that, you can let go of your worries about giving away too much in your marketing. 

I will give you a perfect example. Now I have gotten a bit of a reputation over the last couple of years. The reputation is for creating the best free, live, five day challenges in the history of ever. And you don’t need to take my word for it, go check my website. From 2020 to 2021, it was the Brand Stories that Convert. And in 2022, it’s all about making an Instant Impact with your introduction. 

If you look at the testimonials and they are the legion, you will see, people are saying over and over and over again they cannot believe what I taught them. They cannot believe that they have gotten more value from these free challenges than from a whole bunch of courses and programs and things that they paid lots of money for. Many of them have said, this content should be behind a paywall. And in fact, they’ve reached out to me concerned, saying you shouldn’t be giving this away.

Here is why they say this about my challenges. Because I don’t just give you the why and like a mindset shift. I actually teach you how to create something, how to nail a key part of your brand messaging. You know, those essential words that you’ve got to have to confidently communicate what you do and why it matters, so that all of that sales and marketing actually impacts a greater audience and brings in those truly ideal clients quickly and simply. Sounds pretty good, right?

So why would I do that? Why on earth would I give away something that is this valuable? Well, because as much as people refer to these challenges as my class, or my course, it’s not. These challenges are my marketing. Yes, I teach. Yes, I help. Yes, it changes people’s business forever. And that’s fantastic. Of course I love that. But the purpose behind these challenges is to entice my audience to come closer and then to move on to the next step with me. 

So, I, number one, leave them wanting more, for, I can’t possibly give away my entire Extraordinary Impact group coaching program in the course of one week. What I do in these challenges, it’s one small piece of what I teach in Extraordinary Impact. We couldn’t possibly cover it all. It’s deep and it’s real work and it takes time. Also. I know that information is fantastic and I love my methodologies, but that’s not enough. My clients need support to take these lessons and apply them to their individual businesses. That is where all of the difference happens when they implement it, they try it out and they tweak it to make it their own. I can do that in Extraordinary Impact, over the course of time, I cannot give that level of support in a free five day challenge with 500 people. I just can’t. 

So, I leave them wanting more, and number two, I invite them to take that next step. I invite them to come into Extraordinary Impact so they can, not only perfect their brand story and their introduction, but create that confident, unique brand message that they’ve got to have to pull away from the pack as a thought leader.

So, here is why this is great marketing. Because people come in on day one and they don’t know me at all. They’re cold and they see very, very quickly the difference from every other BS challenge out there. Over and over again, they say they have left challenges on day one or on hour, one, or within 10 minutes, because they just understood that nothing was happening there. 

But they stay with me for five days, because from day one, they’re having breakthroughs and getting results they’ve never gotten before. They’re things that they have worked on for years and they’re getting them sorted in an hour. And so very, very quickly they’re establishing that know, like, and trust that we’re all after in our marketing. 

They fall in love with my teaching methods. And when they see what they can actually do, DO, not just think about, they trust me and my process and that I can help them get where they want to go. No matter how long they’ve been working on this, no matter how many other people have failed them. And so when I invite them to take that next step, they say yes, please.

And, I mean, why not? In the last challenge I did, Sheila, Keilty made $9,600 on day two. Day two of a free challenge. she made almost $10,000 just based on what she learned. So, of course, when I invited her, she joined Extraordinary Impact.

But none of this fantastic stuff would be happening if I went the typical route of most coaches and consultants on this and lived in fear of giving away too much in my marketing. Yes, I could hold back. Yes, I could give less, but then it wouldn’t have this fantastic effect, not on Sheila, not on the people in the challenge, and not on my business. It would fail as marketing. Does that make sense? 

So this is what I wanted to get across to you today. Do not ever give away your coaching or consulting work for free, never, ever, ever, ever. And don’t undercut your marketing by holding back. Draw a bright line between the two and follow my rules for each. And you’ll be golden. 

Now, I’m going to be very meta and tell you right now, if you want more Wendy, let me invite you to the next step. Make sure that you’re in on my next extraordinary challenge. I have dropped the link right below.

Thank you so much for watching and I will see you in the next video. 

Now go be extraordinary!