What Is Business and Marketing to Coaches Who Coach Coaches? (And Why This System Is Flawed)

My thoughts as a coach and creative…

There’s been some drama in the online coaching world lately, and the industry has a magnifying glass on it right now in a way that it hasn’t in a while. Many are asking what business and marketing is even about anymore when it can sometimes feel like just a money-making machine built around coaches teaching other coaches how to coach more coaches.

Sure, many of us have chosen to move on from the recent drama and not get too caught up in everyone’s viral videos around a certain live event with thousands of people in attendance. I’m talking, of course, about Shoshanna Raven’s Living Brave Live event in Denver earlier this month, and some of the fallout that has been playing out online since, including complaints from people involved with the event and accusations being thrown around about the business model itself. The event was marketed as a 2,100-seat experience, with official sponsor and partner opportunities starting at $25,000. Some of what is being said online right now is allegation and opinion rather than verified fact, so I’m not interested in dissecting every claim or piling onto one particular person or company.

And honestly, I don’t want to give much airtime to the shadow side of the industry anyway because, let’s face it, the whole “coaches who coach coaches to coach coaches” system is something that has been up for discussion for many years.

What it HAS made me do, once again, is check myself to make sure I’m not falling into those same patterns.

Coach for Online Business

The reason I’m sharing all of this isn’t to distance myself from coaching entirely. I am, in many ways, a coach for online business, but I didn’t build one successful business, hit a ceiling and decide the next logical step was teaching other entrepreneurs how to replicate my success. The work I do today through Rebel Soul Media is also backed by actual education, training and professional experience in media, communications, marketing and PR that started long before I became an entrepreneur.

The fact of the matter is this: I went to college for television broadcasting. I got a diploma in it and, yes, that gave me the credentials and foundation to quickly grasp most aspects of the technical side of television broadcasting.

My first job was actually my internship, working in the back of what was then a 90% male-dominated ENG news gathering and camera department. I got to run the camera in the helicopter for the 6 p.m. news. Shortly after my internship ended I was hired on as a VTR operator, doing tape-to-tape editing, recording international feeds and hitting play on each individual video segment that made up the evening newscast.

In the years that followed, I would do everything from sorting scripts, to producing and managing the studio floor, instructing the anchors, counting down cameras and eventually directing live television.

I also worked as an on-screen graphics operator, producing all of the words and images you see floating along the bottom and top of your news screen. This was thanks, in part, to the fact that during my college days I had taken an in-depth graphic design course.

During my decade-plus working in corporate television broadcasting environments, I also learned a lot about media, multimedia, cross-platform communication and marketing. In several of my roles, I worked closely with the PR and marketing departments of some of Canada’s major broadcasters, including CTV, Global Television, Citytv and more.

When I had my first major pivot and decided to leave my career in TV to become an entrepreneur in the health and wellness space, I had no idea what to expect.

Like so many other people, I was thrown into the fire and had to figure out a lot of the entrepreneurship stuff for myself.

Lucky for me, I did already have a background in certain aspects of it because of my time in television, so some things came much more easily to me. I didn’t have quite as much to figure out from scratch.

And yet, from 2012 until the present day, I have learned through trial by fire. I’ve shot from the hip. I’ve had lots of major successes and heaps of failure.

So as a digital marketing coach, and as an entrepreneur who now helps other entrepreneurs launch and grow their businesses, I bring a unique blend of real-world experience, tactical knowledge and personal experience as an entrepreneur in the wellness space who has actually had to navigate the ins and outs of doing this myself.

And I’ve also done hundreds of hours of additional training to better myself in this space.

I did not just take my decade-plus as an entrepreneur, call that “real-world experience” and call it a day.

I actually went back to university.

Yes, I was 45 years old, sitting alongside a bunch of twenty-somethings, learning the in-depth nerdy bits when it comes to digital marketing.

And it has definitely given me a leg up.

I learned current, tactical information about digital marketing that the average entrepreneur is simply never exposed to, even inside some of the $10K-per-month masterminds, incubators and entrepreneurial spaces being sold online.

So do I consider myself the same as the coaches who coach coaches who coach coaches, with no real experience aside from their own success?

No, I do not.

And do I think every seven- or eight-figure coach who claims they are somehow more legit simply because they have made millions in their own business is automatically more qualified to help someone else build theirs?

Again, no.

Because the fact of the matter is, even if you have made multimillions in your business, the way you did it is not necessarily going to work for anyone else.

In fact, I would argue that what worked for you is very likely not going to work in exactly the same way for the average person trying to start their business from the ground up.

We can do a lot when we have a massive team, a massive marketing budget and we’ve already been at it for several years. But when we are just starting out, there is a lot of foundational work that these masterminds and high-level business spaces can skip right over.

Business and Marketing Coach

The work I do as a business and marketing coach comes from a place of really trying to understand the business owners and entrepreneurs I work with.

It is high-touch and hands-on. And because of my background as a coach, a breathwork facilitator and a trauma-aware spiritual and wellness professional, I truly see the person behind the business.

My goal and my MO is to make sure we are doing the right things for THEM and their business without blindly following a framework or trying to squeeze their business into a box.

And I also recognize that there is more required than simply “having the right vision and the right vibe.”

Yes, I’m a spiritual person, but when it comes to helping people through Rebel Soul Media, I am strategy first.

Because no amount of feeling bold in your vision or embodying the identity of the woman who is already making millions is going to get you very far if you don’t have the foundations set first.

If you don’t know exactly what you’re offering and whether people are actually going to buy it, we need to look at your offer and business MODEL.

If you haven’t met your ideal MATCH, AKA you don’t know who your target audience actually is, how your offer fits what they need or want, or what transformation you’re actually providing when they buy from you, we need to look at your market.

If you don’t have a clear MESSAGE, and I don’t necessarily mean what YOU want to say about your offer but what your right-match people need to hear in order to feel seen, understood and moved enough to press the Buy Now button, we need to work on that too.

Then we need to figure out where we are directing our MEGAPHONE. What media are we using to spread that message? And spoiler alert, not everyone needs to be on Instagram. Substack is not going to be the right answer for everyone either.

And finally, we have to make sure we have the MACHINE in place. These are the systems supporting the business in the background while also bringing the perfect matches you’ve attracted with your message and your megaphone through an intentional customer journey.

How are you bringing people through your world in a way that makes them feel seen, heard and excited to work with you?

These foundations of business and marketing are what I’m going to be moving through in my upcoming six-week business foundations and marketing program, The Brand That Breathes.

This is all about recognizing that you, as a solopreneur or small business owner, are a living, breathing entity with an essence, AND knowing that we need to get these foundations in place before we start digging into all of the identity work and bold visioning.

There will be a little bit of that, of course, and I’ll be adding some breathwork sessions as optional practices for those who want them, but this is a tangible, tactical, hands-on six-week live program where we are going to work through this five-step process together.

There will be bonuses on how to use ads to grow your business so that you can spend less time online. There will be a live session on how to gain confidence on camera so that you can spread your message with more ease. And we will actually be doing the foundational work together rather than simply talking about the version of you who has already done it.

I cannot wait because I genuinely feel like this is the kind of program so many small business owners have been wanting and that there is still a gap for in this industry.

And I’m ready to fill it.

Does your business actually make sense? Take the free 5-minute Business Foundations Quiz and find out whether your business has the foundations it needs to grow, or if all those random marketing tactics are making things harder than they need to be.