Ep #199: How to Dress Your Coaching Room

You are listening to episode 199 of The Confident Coaches Podcast, the one where you’re going to dress up your online store, so your people want to shop there. What? Come on, let’s go.

Welcome to The Confident Coaches Podcast, a place for creating the self-confidence you need to do your best work as a life coach. If you want to bring more boldness, more resilience and more joy to your work, this is the place for you. I’m your host, Amy Latta. Let’s dive in.

Hi, you, how are you doing? I’m so excited that you are here with me today, like I really am. I just want to take a moment before I dive in. I do have a pretty short but really fun conversation coming to you today, but I just really want to take a moment for recording episode 199.

It’s a lot of episodes. Like wow, it’s really a lot of episodes. You guys have been here, some of you from the beginning, most of you probably not. Maybe you’ve listened to all 198 previous episodes. Maybe this is your first one.

I am actually getting a little over clipped. I truly am just so honored to have you here, to have you be witness to so much of what’s happened over the past couple of years on this side of the table to have held space for me, as I have shared practicals and tacticals, emotional shit, everything in between, truth bombs, really difficult conversations, super fluffy conversations and everything else. I hope you enjoy this conversation.

It’s a little bit different than what I’ve done before, but I also think it’s kind of fun. Let’s just see what’s coming up next.

A lot of this summer I have spent I know I’ve mentioned this multiple times, but I have a couple of one-on-one clients I’ve been doing we were getting ready to wrap up this last round of Mastermind In my free-to-paid coach. I gave away one-on-one coaching to literally everybody. It was like let’s just have individual conversations. My calendar has been booked, booked, booked, booked, booked, booked. Almost to my own detriment, let’s be honest, because I did not build in enough productivity time, and that’s totally okay because the conversations have been so, so good. We’ve had a lot of messaging work this summer.

Messaging is part of your marketing. It’s your messaging, your branding, your messaging. It’s how people know your business is you and whether or not your business is for them. When you nail your messaging, your content plans can be imperfect. Your nurturing plans can be imperfect. Everything can be so imperfect when your messaging is really, really good. I’ve been having this conversation with brand new coaches, very well-established coaches and everything in between.

Some of the things that we’re talking about is defining your core messages. What are the core messages of your coaching business? What are the hot topics that you talk about that are tangential, but maybe not specifically what you talk about me talking about ADHD. I’m not an ADHD coach, but you should probably know that I’m a coach with ADHD, because that’s going to either repel you or draw you in or be very neutral for you. Who knows? Then, also, just like shit, that makes me cool, like my ridiculous laugh, and I love movies and music and food.

There’s nothing to do with coaching, right, your messaging is also your vibe. Your messaging is the experience people have when they work with you. This can be the language you use, the feelings that they’re going to experience being in your space. Yeah, we might be talking about colors and fonts also.

That can be the visual aspect of your messaging and your branding. If you are a bombastic powerful, we’re going to have big, loud conversations. You probably aren’t going to have a pastel color palette, right, but a conversation that I had with one of my one-on-one clients is. We took the same information, but we looked at it from a, we kind of picked it up and put it into a completely different angle, and it’s what we’re going to do here.

But first I’m going to take you back in time. So, if y’all don’t know, kind of one of the shits that makes me cool is my Gen X-ness right. So, I came up in the 80s. It was the 80s. We’re literally the mall was king, and you’ve all seen the meme that’s like Gen X retirement homes. They should just take all the old malls and turn them into Gen X retirement homes. And I’m getting ready to name a shit ton of clothing stores or a shit ton of stores that some of you I’m going to take some of y’all back Millennials are going to relate to a lot of this.

Anybody like young millennials I mean maybe not so much, but back in the day we lived in the malls. Man, I am telling you, you know, mid to late 80s, every Friday night one parent would drop off, another parent would pick up and we literally roamed like, yes, it’s what we did. We roamed the malls, we walked all the way upstairs, all the way downstairs. We had our certain like key stores that we would hit. You know who we would see, where we would go grab something to eat. You know, just like fast times at Ridgemont High.

But you know when I maybe a little less sex for me in the 80s, it’s always a child but yeah, very you know fast times at Ridgemont High where people were eating and where they were shopping and all those things. And here’s like, here’s something that I didn’t think about back then because I was a kid, preteen and teenager in the 80s. So, in case you all were like, I was born in 74, so I became a teenager in 87.

But I think about, like you had your bookstores, right Walden books, borders, b Dalton. You had your music stores. There was Music Land, Sam Goody, Camelot, music towards like the late 80s or maybe it was the early 90s, they created Blockbuster music stores and like there were certain places that, like you, would definitely make sure that you would hit and there’d be like a vibe that was more you.

The easiest way to explain this example is by the clothing stores, right, because you had County Seat Contemporal Casuals 579, Merry Go Round, the Limited Express, Benetton, the Gap.

So, the question that I have for you is like, what made you want to shop at one of those stores and not the others, right? So, like, yeah, maybe, maybe for some of you, the bookstores were like you never even walked by them. That didn’t matter to you.

For sure, there were different music stores that had slightly different vibes, right, but for sure, everybody can relate to that clothing store conversation. You had your favorites, and the question is, why? Right, because they all basically sold currently stylish clothing.

Right, they all essentially sold modern clothing, clothing that young people were buying and wearing, but there were different vibes and different stores, right, like, maybe it was the music, maybe it was the visual merchandising that maybe you weren’t completely understanding at the time, but you can like understand that now.

Right, like, now it’s like the difference between like why, like a target versus a Walmart I don’t even know if there are Kmart’s anymore Like, those are all essentially the same store, but they are very different, right, maybe it was the music, maybe it was the visual design, maybe price was a factor, right, okay, yeah, maybe it was because someone you liked worked there. That’s also a possibility.

I’m not saying that you might not like people might not choose you because they just like you and it doesn’t matter what your store looks like. But there were stores where you just felt like that place was for you, you were drawn to it, you felt it, you vibed with it, right?

So, like you were roaming the mall, some stores that, like other people would walk into you just had no interest in and you would walk on by and go into another store. And there’s a reason why because not every store speaks to every single potential buyer. There’s vibes, right?

Have you considered your coaching business like a store at the mall? And if you did like, how would you like it if your coaching room was a store? How, how would it be dressed up? Right, how would you dress up that space visually, emotionally, et cetera?

So, like, please be really clear, don’t go so literal here that you think I’m telling you to go pick out paint colors. Wait, this is a metaphorical exercise, right, I’m giving you a visual example to help you kind of go there. That if you could imagine you’re walking a mall and every store in there was a different coaching business, they wouldn’t all look the same, they wouldn’t all be having the same sales, they wouldn’t all be the same price.

And while you might have, you’re definitely going to have a variety of like, you know there’s a B Dalton next to a Sam Goody next to a Merry Go Round, you might have different coaching, but you might also have like three or four clothing stores in a row. You might have three weight coaches right in a row. Right, I’m picking up what I’m throwing down here.

So, here’s what I want you to think about. If the coaching industry is a mall and we’re all hanging out at the mall, we’re all roaming the mall, who is your space for? Who’s your space for? Who’s drawn to come, walk across the crowded mall over to your space? What kind of person is that? Who’s comfortable there?

Now, not that the work that you’re doing inside coaching rooms should be comfortable, but, like, who’s picking up what you’re throwing down? Who’s vibing with you? What kind of conversations are taking place in your space, right? What kind of conversations are taking place there? What kind of tools are used?

Like coaching tools are used in your space that distinguish you from any of the other stores there? What are the transformations or the new outcomes that people can expect by coming to your place over and over again? Right, if they keep shopping there, eventually they’re going to transform into something. What might that be? What’s the feeling of your space, the language, the vibe right now?

One thing that I want to mention as we’re talking about this is that it is possible that, like, people with very different needs could shop just in your store, like. So, for instance, if you are a more general life coach, as opposed to a super narrowed niche, your space still calls in a certain kind of person, right, even if you were a life coach who offers a variety of potential outcomes.

Yes, you want to be very specific about what those potential outcomes are. Please, we need to stop vague booking in our marketing, right? Our messaging should not be vague. It should be very clear what people are going to get when they shop at your store. But you can sell a variety of things in your store, but there’s a certain type of person who still wants to shop at that store Because of the vibe in there, the language in there, the energy in there.

Another way to approach this is who’s walking by? Who’s walking by your store to get to somebody else’s store, who’s being turned off by you and why? But who are you not for? Who is your space not for? Who has no business walking in your store Because they are not going to find what they’re looking for.

They’re going to feel uncomfortable there the entire time. It’s really helpful to know what that is or who that is or what that is or about that is, so that you can recognize. Oh, I don’t need to worry about pulling those people into my store. I’m not for them, I don’t need to be, and you want to? There’s a store right next door that’s for them. Instead, they should go shop there, right?

Who wants to be drawing in your people? They’re like yes, I love the music in here, I love the vibe in here, I love the colors in here, I love the, and really, what we’re going for is the feeling people feel in your space, right, like they don’t have to be exactly like you, they don’t have to be exactly like one another. It’s your space that we’re defining, right, and who this space is for. This is you truly being you and you putting your you-ness on display, and we’re just using the stores in a mall metaphor to kind of see if that helps you unlock some of these questions you’ve been unable to unlock so far, because this is not a conversation we haven’t had before. We’re just having it a slightly different way.

Okay, so like, and how might this translate? Like, can I? Why don’t I give you some examples to see if this helps you translate this to you? So, you know, let’s imagine we are in the mall of coaches and there’s three weight coaches. This weight coach is going to talk about planning your meals a day ahead of time.

That’s the key feature of this store Next door. They’re going to be talking all about intuitive eating. And the store after that is going to focus on lots of testing and elimination of foods and intermittent fasting. They’re all selling weight loss. But dang, if people aren’t going to have incredibly different conversations in each of those three stores. Right Now, that’s just kind of like the conversations.

We can even layer even more on top of that right. Like, maybe this store attracts a more serious person, a more practical and tactical person Doesn’t have a lot of time for like the touchy-feely stuff, right? So, if you are like somebody who likes to emote all over the place, that person is probably not going to be like love your space and your vibe. But maybe you don’t like to emote all over the place.

And so that person who doesn’t feel comfortable with a lot of the touchy-feely stuff which would be really funny if you were here hanging out with me, because you know I like to emote all over the place, right? Maybe this store over here? Well, you know. Well, this store over here. That more serious, practical, tactical person who doesn’t have a lot of time without touchy-feely stuff felt very comfortable over here.

Well, it’s possible, this store next year you want to know our next store. Anyone with a neurodivergence of any kind feels very welcome there.

What other people perceive as all over the placeness that they often feel a lot of shame for, maybe they feel very much at home in your space. This has been huge right here. I am really and I don’t think this is going to come as a huge surprise if you’ve listened to literally any podcast episode this year of understanding how many times I, how many years I’ve spent in the wrong stores. They were never for me.

I thought, like my all over the placeness is what needed fixed, as opposed to finding spaces that fully accepted that part of me. That wasn’t what was needed to be fixed.

Oh my gosh, now that I understand that I feel so much more comfortable in the spaces I choose to be in now because I feel very much at home, and I want to offer to you that there’s a lot of people who don’t love that about me. They do not want to hire me; I do not love that part of me at all and they’re never going to work with me. It’s okay. It’s okay.

They can go to the store next door, right? So you know, maybe this store over here is loud and bombastic and over the top, right, they are shouting from the rooftops and this space over here, the store over here, way more subtle, way more subdued, way more subtle, way more subdued, having much quieter conversations, way more quiet and contemplative, like you can just tell right there how I just like totally did two entirely different vibes, just right there.

Right, and we’ve just talked about weight coaches, right? Like you could layer any number of those combinations together and you can see I’m not going to do like the three different things that they talk about, the two different kinds of buyers in the two different spaces, but like I don’t know how many different combinations that is, there’s a math problem in there that I’m not going to do.

I don’t know how many different combinations that is, but there’s lots of variety right there. I’m just talking about weight loss, right?

What happens when we talk about you know, if you specialize in relationships or career coaching or hello business, I think about my space, right, when I think about my space, when I’m thinking about my store at the mall, like I want the audacious and the different and the bold. I want to have really freaking, daring conversations in my space.

I want to have disruptive conversations in my space. I want to have conversations where people go oh, oh shit. Did she say that all out? Yeah, she did. And we’re going to laugh and we’re going to cry, possibly within minutes of each other. And you better love laughter and you better love the word fuck.

People who are going to be comfortable here, people who are going to enjoy the space comfortable might be an interesting word choice, because maybe it’s not very comfortable, but they love a really good, you know.

Challenging something that I’ve always thought to be true and figuring out what’s going to go in that new place. What’s the new story? People who really love to rewrite all of their stories that they’ve been telling. People who love to uncover the bullshit that’s been piled on top of them. Not everybody loves that. Not everybody wants to do that work. It’s totally fine.

But if you don’t want to do that work. You’re probably not super comfortable in my store. You know the ones people who might have shit, tons of fear. These aren’t like my people, aren’t necessarily fearless people. They’re probably loaded with fear and nerves and awkwardness. But they also know that they’re not going to let that stop them, at least not anymore. Maybe they’ve never let that stop them, maybe they’re ready to no longer let that stop them.

So even there could be some variance. But for sure these are not like overly, like always been confident, never been worried about what other people think of them completely fearless people. No, they’d probably look at me and be like do we need to do this work? I’m fine. But they know for sure they’re not going to let that stuff stop them anymore.

And we could be talking specific marketing tactics one minute and then be uncovering a deeply held belief system that needs rewiring the next minute. Like that happens all the damn time. All of the time we are always okay, so here are the core messages that you’re going to work from. Here are your hop topics that you’re going to work on.

Here’s the nurturing plan that you’re going to work from. Oh shit, let’s uncover this thing about how you think talking about these things too much is going to cause people to like, want to come, like burn you down. All right, what’s going on there? What the fuck patriarchy is at play? Right there, let’s unpack that right.

 

This is not a one size fits all and absolutely it was a one size fits all clothing over here. We’re going to modify the coaching to the person right in front of me and I will literally say, particularly in a group coaching call this is not for everyone, this is for this person in particular.

For somebody else you might need to hear this opposite thing. Like. I’ve done that like back-to-back to back multiple times this week already. I literally coached two different people in two separate hours. We coached one way in this hour. In the very next way, I was like, all right, I got to go the exact opposite direction that I just went. This isn’t one size fits all.

We’re going to have different conversations with the different people. We’re going to meet you where you are and we’re going to talk about marketing strategy. We’re going to talk about nurturing plans. We’re going to talk about copy. We’re going to talk about, like, business basics, trainings, goals.

We’re talking about doubt and belief and unbelieving and feeling discomfort and we’re going to talk about intersectional conversations and how we’re going to define success and how mental load is like killing so many dreams and anti-patriarchy.

We’re going to talk about dopamine and rest and non-productivity, and you know signs of ADHD, how it might be affecting you. But we’re not only speaking to just those things. We’re speaking to anything that might be affecting you and not others. We’re having all kinds of conversations like that and any conversations that you bring to the table and I’m like I’m down for.

I’m down for all of it, right, and also, I know that if somebody wants to come and they want to talk about, like, okay, how do you build a truly anti-capitalist business? That’s not my specialty. So, while we can talk about it, we’re probably more going to define questions that need to be answered as opposed to hires, how you do that. So definitely in my store I know where to draw lines of like that’s out of my purview. We can begin the conversation.

And when I see that you’re ready for more here, why don’t you go check out so-and-so? I’m not all things to all people. You really want to talk more about tapping? Great, you need to go see so-and-so. Oh, you want to talk about numbers and money. Oh, you need to go see so-and-so. Oh, okay, you want to have a manifestation conversation. Again, you need to go talk to so-and-so, right.

What I love is that you have other business slash mindset slash marketing coaches who are just so very different. And you know, like I was saying before, you don’t have to vibe with me because there’s another store right next door, down the hall, right, and this is so important.

I’ve mentioned it a couple different times, but I really want to make sure we hammer this idea home, letting people who your store in the mall is not for, letting them walk on by.

Like, if we go back to the clothing store analogy, like, can you imagine, like, if you’re a Benetton, colors of the world kind of gal, how many seat would be wasting their time trying to like drag you into the store, either dragging you in and trying to convince that you’re really a county seat kind of girl, or trying to pretend that they are Benetton when really their county seat?

That wouldn’t make any sense. Those are two different vibes, two different kinds of buyers, two different kinds of clients. I mean, possibly most people didn’t probably shop in both stores. It’s possible there could be some crossover, right, but like it wouldn’t make sense in any way, shape or form that somebody who wanted the more designer, higher endness of, say, the limited.

Now, this isn’t a great example, because in the 80s they were very different, but now they’re actually owned by the same people or they’re very similar but, like the limited versus the gap, very different vibes, so different. They should not be attracting the same people.

Your willingness to not take it personally, to not make it all about you when somebody says you aren’t for me, that’s for me over there, perfect, because that really depends on your belief that who you are is exactly what other people are looking for and the more you keep being you, those people can find you.

If you keep trying to be like a different store, like if you’re trying to be like a pop-up store and a different pop-up store every single day, people are never going to figure out like who you are and what you offer and the kind of vibe and the experience that they’re going to have with you.

But this doesn’t mean that you can’t evolve and change hello, hundred and ninety-nine episodes. I’ve definitely done that, but I’ve just become more of me. My messages, my message, my messaging has definitely changed, but my Amy-ness, my inherent Amy-ness, has only become clearer. That’s not necessarily changed.

We want people to see themselves dressed up in your coaching spaces, right? We want them to see themselves in your rooms and in your spaces and if they don’t, the last thing we want to do is force them into that. This is never going to feel right.

Right, and we’ve seen those scenes in those movies where, like, we’re trying to put like clothes on people that just they don’t fit, they, they like literally don’t fit or they look ridiculous in them, like it doesn’t make sense. So quit trying to do that with your coaching business.

Trying to make your coaching store in the mall Be the store that everybody wants to shop at, because then you’re just a bland beige, could fit and work on everybody, so it doesn’t really fit or work on anybody. What’s your store?

This is about being unapologetically you right and letting it shine and letting it be the forefront. These are the things I want to be known for. These are the things I want people to say.

Who does she think she is to have these kinds of conversations? Yes, we can coach on becoming more comfortable with that and feeling safety in that. But yes, I want people to say cut the audacity of that broad yes, the audacity of her to be that in that space, and stake that claim that this is who I am, this is what I sell.

These are the conversations we’re going to have here. This is what you can expect when you work with me. This is who I am, and this is who I’m for and this is who I’m not for.

All your messages are pinpointing that person that you’re for, so they are laser like. They are like tractors beaming on. You can’t do that. If you’re beige vanilla. I happen to like vanilla ice cream or something wrong with vanilla ice cream, but it shouldn’t be your storefront, okay, so spend some time thinking about that. What would your store be?

Use that visual, go back, listen to jobs, jot some questions down, bring this to play more, sell more. If you want to have continue this conversation and know that, if you’re messaging, if your core topics, your values, your vision, who you are, who you aren’t if you do not have this defined, make sure you’re in Play more, Sell more, because that’s going to be the first place that I tell you how you can get that information solved and figured out, because I got to tell you, guys, next week is September.

We got some shit changing good stuff, more available to more people, and yet some of it’s going to be different than what I have said is coming, but it’s so it’s. It’s so much freaking better because I myself have thought about who am I in this mall of coaching?

I feel so building more value these days and status, audaciousness, bold, big ideas, innovative ideas, ideas that are going to change the spaces that you are in.

You’re going to need to get them out into that marketplace. I want that mall to just be like one store after another, after another after another, that knows exactly who they are and how they help and what they do unapologetically, boldly, with so much freaking audacity. God, it’s gorgeous. That’s what lights me up, that’s what gets me excited.

Okay, I can’t wait to see what you create when you are so unapologetically you. I’m so excited to see what you create in this world, and I’ll talk to you next week.

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Thanks so much for listening to The Confident Coaches Podcast. I invite you to learn more. Come visit me at www.amylatta.com and until next week, let’s go do epic stuff.