Do you ever feel like you’ve been ‘friend-zoned’ in your business? It can be damn tiring, not to mention frustrating, feeling like your community and audience want to be your friend rather than wanting to hire you.
It’s like your people are willing to ask your opinion on things and double-tap your posts but they don’t really see you as someone they would work with – they see you as a peer or a friend, rather than respected and credible coach. Ever feel this way? While having friends is great, you know having a community full of friends is not going pay your bills, or grow your business. So what do you do about it?
Recently I’ve seen this issue of being ‘friend-zoned’ come up a lot and leaves people saying things like, “if I just had a bigger audience, then the numbers would trickle through into my business”. I say BS to that. If you can’t convert a small audience, the same challenge will be amplified with a bigger audience, you’ll just have a bigger group of friends and the exact same problem!
What’s actually happening when you’re being friend zoned is that unintentionally you are positioning yourself as a friend, rather than a Coach. There is a BIG difference in the way successful Coaches position themselves versus traditional product based brands and even online ‘influencers’. The traditional model is to have you connect with them as a person or brand, like them and when you see a product you like, it’s simple. You buy it.
That isn’t true for Coaches and in all honesty, it just doesn’t work. You are not selling a product that people buy when they ‘like’ you, you are selling a service that creates personal transformation, change and direct results for your client. Let’s think about this in another way. Do you buy from a lawyer because you ‘like’ them or because you value and respect the way they do their work and the results they provide? Do you want a Doctor you ‘like’ and dances around the confronting things you need to hear or one that’s known for curing the health issue you have and compassionately and truthfully telling you how it is?
What I know to be true is that a Coach asks all the things no one else is willing to, it can cause discomfort, it can be triggering and a coach consistently holds you to account. That’s exactly what we sign up for when we work with a coach because we know that is the way to grow and create results we never have before. It’s the light shone onto all the ways we are limiting ourselves that no one else in our life helps us see and in fact we WANT them to tell us that, not what they think will make us like them, that serves nobody!
Being ‘liked’ is not the goal. In fact, your desire to be being liked is keeping you in the friend zone, holding you back from sharing the content you need to, not converting Discovery Calls and could also be doing a disservice to your clients – are you willing to call out something or ask the difficult question that you know your client might not like hearing, which may mean they don’t necessarily ‘like’ you in that moment?
So how do we make this shift? I share it all in the video training below.
What this video covers:
- The problem with ‘know, like, trust’ for coaches
- The two biggest ways I see the need to be liked preventing you from being hired (which means making money)
- What to focus on to replace ‘know, like, trust’
- Prompts to get you thinking about where the need to be liked is blocking your success
- Bonus conversation on overcoming the biggest objections Coaches hear
If you loved this training then you will love my Facebook group ‘The Coaches Collective’, it’s a private community of heart-driven coaches where I share ALL my tips and tricks and weekly live trainings just like this one to help you grow your client base and cash in your business. Come join the community now by clicking here or search ‘The Coaches Collective’ on Facebook and request to join.