In today's episode, we dive into building your personal brand as a coach. You’ll hear about "Connected Kelly," a coach who initially felt pressured to conform to an analytical persona in her big tech job, only to discover that her true strength—Connectedness—was what truly set her apart. You’ll learn how she transformed her approach, leading to a more fulfilling and energized coaching practice.
We also explore practical tips for building your personal brand, including how to identify the challenges you can help solve and how to communicate your unique value effectively. Whether you're an independent coach or working internally at a company, it’s important to be specific in your messaging to connect with your ideal clients.
So, if you’re ready to make sure your coaching brand aligns with your personal brand, this episode is packed with insights and actionable advice to help you shine!
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Your differences are your differentiators: Don’t shy away from what makes you different. Like Connected Kelly, who initially suppressed her connectedness, recognizing and embracing your unique strengths can lead to a more fulfilling coaching practice.
Be specific in your messaging: Vague statements like "I help you live your best life." are unclear and uninteresting. Instead, focus on clear, compelling messages that resonate with your audience, such as "I help get your emails get read." This specificity helps potential clients see the value you offer.
You are your brand: Your personal brand is a reflection of who you are. By aligning your strengths, values, and messaging, you’ll create a cohesive brand that resonates with your audience and showcases your unique contributions.
Narrowing your focus can attract more clients: When it comes to marketing, less is more! Don’t fear that specializing will limit your opportunities. Instead, it can help you attract clients who are specifically looking for the solutions you provide, ultimately leading to a more successful coaching practice.
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Identify Your Strengths: Reflect on your unique strengths and how they contribute to your coaching practice. Let your differences be your differentiators – in your brand, your business model, and beyond.
Identify the Challenges You Solve:: Determine the specific challenges you want to address as a coach. Consider what problems your ideal clients face and how your strengths can help solve those issues. This will help you create targeted messaging that resonates with your audience.
Craft Your Messaging: Develop a clear, concise, and compelling answer to the question, "What do you do?".
Utilize Your Online Presence: Update your LinkedIn profile and other online platforms to reflect your personal brand. Incorporate your strengths and the specific problems you solve in your headlines and descriptions to attract the right clients.
Engage with Your Audience: Actively communicate your value and the unique contributions you bring to your coaching practice. Share insights, tips, and success stories that highlight your strengths and the impact you can have on your clients' lives.
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Lisa: Hi, I'm Lisa.
Brea: I’m Brea.
Lisa: And today's episode is strengths and your personal brand as a coach.
Brea: Yes. Oh my gosh. I love this topic. Let's just dive in.
Lisa: I'm so excited. Okay, let's dive in. I want to dive in with an example of something that happened with a coach who was building a personal brand as a coach and she didn't know it and it wasn't at all what she would have done on purpose. Ooh, I'm intrigued. Tell us more.
Brea: Because I think that so many people fall into this trap.
Lisa: Yeah. Heck yes, we do. I imagine most of us have done this where we unintentionally built a reputation on something that we just became skilled at because we practiced it a lot. And this person, I'm going to call her Connected Kelly. I made up her name because I want to keep her anonymous. But she led through connectedness, hence Connected Kelly.
Brea: And alliteration. We love alliteration. OK. I mean, who doesn't?
Lisa: OK. She's a real client. She works in big tech. And she felt like I need to be analytical. That's what I need to be, to be believed, to be credible, to be desired in this company, to be found useful in this company.
I mean, we could go on and on, but analytical was the thing that she really grabbed onto as important for her to be. So she spent a lot of years really honing it, doing analytical actions, showing analytical skills, and showing up that way.
Brea: And probably because she's surrounded with people who are acting like this or who are showing up that way. She feels like she has to be that too. Yeah. Okay. I'm with you.
Lisa: Yeah. And I can, I mean, my individualization loves that in many ways because I'm thinking, well, she's being palatable to the people that she's around. So she's thinking, this is who I need to be for them. Otherwise they won't value me. And specifically when we talked about connectedness, she was like, oh, that's for my friends.
Brea: She's like, that part of me doesn't belong at work. You know, that's my at home or my with friends. Okay. Yeah. Interesting.
Lisa: Yeah. She really felt deeply like it didn't belong there. Like it would get shunned there. It would get made fun of there. She said it felt like people would perceive it as woo woo, that it would just not go over well. So she just shut it off, like put up the wall, anything. Yeah. Mm-hmm.
So what's the results of it now? She it's not like she was faking it. She legitimately built analytical skills and she legitimately used them with her clients, but the repercussion is She was completely wiped out. It was sucking the life out of her because it wasn't fun. It was just something she could do
And I think this is a really important lesson for building a personal brand as a coach, because if you do what you're competent at, you're going to get more of that. She's great. She's an amazing performer, an amazing person. So she kept getting more of the work she didn't want because she showed up and she was good at the work she didn't want.
Brea: That's the worst, the worst.
Lisa: It's a bad cycle.
Brea: Digging your own grave, you know.
Lisa: Yes, yes. Now we did some things with it so I can tell you what I did with her and then I want to switch over to things that you might do with her after she's to the point where she's ready. She feels good about her personal brand aligned with her strengths so that her personal brand as a coach is making her feel alive. It's bringing her clientele that she loves.
So I have this personal branding page. It's leadthroughstrengths.com slash personal dash branding. We started there. We started looking at her top five. We really honed in on connectedness because it was one she said she was squashing. And we just use it as a starting point because she's like, OK, genuine. Well, that's a good thing for me to be as a coach. Being present with people, that's a good one. Okay.
And then we start talking about things like, Oh, I see downstream effects. I understand how parts are connected. I have good rapport across departments. Okay, like all these things could be useful internally. I just shut it off. Because I thought it was the woo-woo strength.
So first pass through, it was really cool, because she realized What a fool! Why am I shutting all this off? There are actually things that I believe people in big tech would value.
And in fact, she's realizing people are like, oh, wow, you're an intrapersonal genius. And they're seeing these elements of her that she didn't show before. And they're things that the clients wanted from her and really valued because they don't know how to do that at all. So that was cool.
Brea: Yeah, it's the lie that we tell ourselves that when we are different, the talents that we might have that are different than what we see around us, we believe that it won't be valued or that it won't be wanted.
And sometimes that is true, but most of the time it is very valuable because other people don't have it. They don't have that capacity, they don't have that ability, and when they saw that in her, that uniqueness, it became her differentiator, right? That's the word that you like to use, Lisa.
Lisa: Yeah, that your differences are your differentiators. Exactly.
Brea: Yes, yes. I think Gallup's focus on naming, claiming, and aiming is what's coming to my head here.
When she was able to look at connectedness and really name it, really understand what that talent is. Maybe it had been called the woo-woo strength, but it was so much more than that.
So when she was able to start finding new definitions for that talent theme, I think that opens up so much potential for us to then claim it, for us to love it in ourselves, you know, for her to see how it could be beneficial at work and how she could love working. How her life at work could actually energize her instead of draining her energy and sucking her soul. She could come to work and thrive and it could increase the connection that she makes with her employees.
And so then when she was able to better understand what it is and what it could be and she could get excited about it and really own it, then she started to aim it and that's where all the magic happens. So what a great example.
Lisa: So, one of the things she named it as was Integrator. She was working with a bunch of software developers, hardware engineers, and what happens is the engineers speak in specifications. That's what was important to them.
But At some point, somebody has to translate that to the non-technical people, whether that is to the marketing team so that you could talk about that to a customer audience and they could actually understand it or otherwise.
So she started thinking of herself as an integrator because she could see all the connections, because she could speak human. They felt like she was a complete genius in this area, but that never got exposed until she started looking at connectedness as this great element of herself and it really became key in her personal brand as a coach.
So, okay, Brea, I know you are a StoryBrand coach and that you keep it under the covers all the time and people don't even know this about you. Let's get some of this magic out of this brain you have on StoryBrand.
Brea: Yes, I was trained in StoryBrand. That’s true.
Lisa: Yeah, OK, so now let's say she wants to work her personal brand as a coach now and connectedness and being an integrator and being perceptive, being a connector. These are some parts of her messaging.
If she came to you and said, OK, now what? How do I build this reputation? How do I begin to change it? How do I do the messaging? What kind of things come up for you and what could be valuable that you could bring? Because I think you have this unique lens because you have story brand and strengths mixed together and it's so cool and I want the audience to get it from you.
Brea: Yeah, thank you. That's why I call my business Strength+Story. I use both of those things all the time. So this is a fun conversation to have.
So if you've never heard of StoryBrand, it's a marketing framework that is built on or let's maybe even say adapted from just general framework of story because there's so much scientific proof and just I think all of us have experience of how story it connects with our brains in a very powerful way.
And there's a framework to it. It's not by accident that the blockbuster movies or the best-selling books are blockbusting or best-selling. That's not by accident. It's by design.
So essentially, if you are adapting this to your brand as a coach, there's a challenge that you help people overcome. So most good stories start with a bomb going off, you know, something that's like really challenging, a problem that needs to be fixed, right? That's what grabs our attention and locks us in from the very beginning, the, the bomb ticking away, right?
So what is that challenge that you as a coach, want to solve for the world, for a particular client, for your company, if you're an internal coach like Connected Kelly, what is the challenge that you have a personal mission to overcome? If you can identify that for yourself, then you can build your messaging around that.
Because when you're communicating that challenge in your messaging and in your branding, in the way you talk about your services, if you're leading with that challenge, you're going to attract the people who need that solution, right?
So it's not a marketing gimmick. It's not a way to manipulate people or to scare people into working with you. It's a real way of connecting with the people who need your services. So I would say that's a great place to start.
And it sounds like Connected Kelly did that where it was kind of a backwards on accident way of doing it. So the challenge is to figure it out first so that you can put that out there in your messaging and your branding.
Lisa: on purpose. It is funny that you say this because there's something really simple that was going on with the problem that linked to her brand which was just no one reads my emails.
And it's because they were boring speeds and feeds, they were not compelling, they were not written from the perspective of the reade: an internal person who's really busy in back-to-back meetings all day. and she's offering coaching services to people who don't really know what a coach is or how a coach can help.
When she realized the thing that would grab them: ‘I can help your emails get read. I can help you get responses, get noticed by your peers so that you become the collaborator.’ So the kind of things that they were having problem with and frustration with, like, ‘hey, I sent an email off and it goes into a black hole.’ Now it doesn't.
Now she is helping them. because she's the integrator, she's helping them communicate with their colleagues in a way that helps them get noticed. And it's because of her connectedness. It's because she can think beyond the analytical.
So I really love that because she was solving that problem for them and loved solving that problem for them. And it was easy for her to do that. And they thought she was a genius.
And she never thought about messaging like this. She was just like, hey, we're here. We can help you live your best life. This is something that we're guilty of as coaches. We're like, oh, everyone needs a coach. It's so powerful. It's amazing. You want to feel good again? You want to live your best life? But inspiration like that actually doesn't drive people to action the way that solving a problem for them does.
Brea: That's right. That's right. And this is where it can be so interesting because You can approach the problem from two different ways. You can look at the problem that your client or your potential client is facing, like no one reads my emails, and make that the problem that you solve.
That's a great way to do it because your client is the hero of their own story. So when they hear your messaging, it needs to be their story that they hear or else they're not interested, right? so many other things pulling for their attention, right? So make it easy for them.
The other way to do it is to look at your strengths. And if you if you are a certified strengths coach, you know this language of bring and need. What do each of your strengths bring? What do they contribute? What problems do they solve really, really well with ease? And you love solving those problems.
And then just make that your business, right? Choose that problem and then put it out there and let the right people find you. So you can go either way and I think that's the first place to start.
If you're listening now and you're like, I really want to work on being intentional about my personal brand as a coach, I would say start with your strengths. figure out what problems you solve really naturally and you want to solve and then build your business around that
or figure out what are the problems that your clients are already coming to you for, right, that you have successfully helped people with and figure out how your strengths are doing that and then be intentional about really leaning into that and building your brand around that.
Lisa: I love this conversation and it overlaps so much with the one about And I know we'll do a separate episode on what your niche is as a coach. But there's overlap because it's like this all relates to what is your specialty? What is unique about working with you?
And if you're not clear in your messaging, then you just overwhelm people with options and they scroll on by because you really have to grab attention with somebody, especially today. There are so many things competing for attention. So that person has to be like, whoa, that was written for me.
And so if she is the one saying, I hope your emails get noticed. I hope your emails get read by colleagues. I hope your specifications get implemented properly. Whatever it is, that wouldn't grab me personally, but I'm not her client. So that's the beauty of it. We know to scroll on by because we're not her client, but the people who are are like, whoa, I need that.
And I think the objection that coaches have to this is we think if I narrow too much, then people won't know what else I could do for them when I decided to specialize in virtual.
I remember the angst I had about putting that on the website, like we specialize in virtual training. And I was like, Oh my gosh, I'm going to lose all my in-person workshops. It's going to be detrimental to the business.
It's not what happened at all. I attracted more virtuals. And then plenty of people still said, Oh, do you also do in-person? Why? Yes, we do.
Brea: Because people are not idiots. They can fill in the blanks. They can make those very easy jumps and connections. So you don't have to spell everything out, but you need to give them a place to start, you know? Yes. It's clear.
Lisa: Yes.
Brea: Yeah, and it's interesting because as coaches, like let's flip it, let's put our coaching hat on, okay? So we're in a conversation with a client and they say, gosh, I really just want to be my best self at work. I really want to live my best life, right? What's the very next thing that you would say?
Lisa: Tell me more.
Brea: Well, yeah, “Tell me more.” Or “What does that mean? What does your best life look like?”, right?
Lisa: Yeah, yeah.
Brea: So what you're saying, Lisa, and what we're saying about building this personal brand that's more specific, instead of just saying, hey, coaching's gonna help you live your best life, it doesn't connect with people. It doesn't connect.
So you understand as a coach, that if someone came to you and said, I want to live my best life, your job is to help them understand. what that best life is. It's not enough just to leave them with this desire to live their best life. That's not helpful to them.
So why are we putting that out in our marketing? Why do we think it's going to be helpful to them in marketing? It's not. And it, which means it's not helpful to you in building your business. It's not, not profitable. It's not converting.
So it is helpful. It is It is your responsibility even to be specific in your messaging, in your marketing, to niche down, to find that signature offer, to build your business model around your strengths, the problems that you solve. That's actually more helpful to the people that you serve and it's a win-win for your business as well.
Lisa: Yes, yes, yes. And I think that's a great place to issue a challenge. What could you talk about in your personal brand that brings in your ideal client, somebody who'd be so fun to work with on a topic that you love coaching on? What could be your hook for marketing?
So to Brea's point about your customer being the hero of the story, you're making them the hero by making them stop in their tracks and say, whoa, this was written for me. That's right.
Brea: They're the hero. You're the guide. They're Luke Skywalker. You are their Yoda, right? Especially in coaching, this metaphor works so well because whoever you're coaching, they are the ones that are doing the work. They're the hero of the story, right?
They're the one that's on their journey. They're the one that is actually doing the work. You are just there to empathize, to keep them on track, to keep them focused, to keep them moving in the right direction. They're the ones that are doing the work.
So your marketing should reflect that. Your messaging should reflect that. Your brand, your visual brand online, you know, in your print media, your deliverables, and you, the way that you speak, the way that you come into networking meetings. Just who you are should align with what you do and they should really flow into and out of each other.
A brand is not something that you just create. You can use this intellectual process to help you get intentional about it, but You are your brand. Your strengths are such a natural place to start when it comes to this because that's what makes you unique. So how do your unique strengths set you apart amongst other strengths coaches? It's not just the client that you serve or the problem that you solve, it's how you do that.
So I just love this conversation in general, but then bringing strengths into it is such a natural, just a natural fit because that's what strengths does best is figuring out what's unique about you, what your unique value is, what your contribution is, what's unique about how you approach it.
And if you can get clear about that and put it out there, you're doing the same thing for yourself as you're helping your clients do for themselves, you know, in their lives.
Lisa: Yes. I love also that we've talked about the independent coach. We'll see a lot of this as natural because they've already been thinking, Oh, I need my messaging. I have to write about myself on my website. I have to have, I have to have my messaging in all the places that I'm talking about my business.
But for internal coaches, I don't think that they have often put a lot of thought into where this messaging would happen or could happen. And just imagine, what if your headline in LinkedIn mentioned something around your personal brand?
Imagine how many times, okay, yesterday, I was personally in my coaching practice, I was talking to a really big customer and there were five people there from the client and they went around the room and described what their role is and three of the five people said, I am in HR.
Brea: Boring!
Lisa: Yeah! Could you imagine if a person was like, oh, I'm in HR. My role is that I'm an internal coach, and I help people get their emails read at work. I would be like, ooh. I don't even need the service, and I'm not even a potential customer, but I'm still like, ooh.
That's really interesting because it's so specific. I also know, oh, I need that. I have a friend who needs that. Oh, I can refer somebody internally. So think about all those places where you might communicate.
If they had used your story brand, they could have been beneficial to some other person who was doing an intro to say, oh, I know somebody. Oh, I know six people in my department who need that.
Now they're referring people to you and you're getting the work that you want more of because that work energizes you. You're working yourself into a lot of job security because you're in such high demand. So there are all kinds of places this come up.
And just think of how many times someone asks you, “What do you do?” That happens all over the place, whether you're an internal coach or an independent coach. So that's a great application for this.
If you're listening, and you're like, I get it. Now, what do I go implement from this? Have an answer to that question, “What do you do?”
Brea: So you're tee-ing me up really well for my call to action for this episode, Lisa.
Lisa: Bring it.
Brea: Usually, answering that question, “So, what do you do?” brings fear and dread and makes us, you know, shake in our boots because we don't know how to answer that question.
So if you're really, really good at what you do, but you don't know how to talk about it and you definitely don't know how to give a compelling, concise answer to that question, “What do you do?” If that's something that you need – that one-liner, that elevator pitch, whatever you call it, you need to reach out to me and we'll get it done.
Lisa: Hit her up, brearoper.com.
Brea: Whether it's a workshop for your team or whether you want to do this one-on-one with me, I also have a keynote version, but answering that question, so what do you do? That is one of my favorite things to do. What about you, Lisa?
Lisa: I have a membership for coaches who are building their independent practice and they need help when it comes to the business building practices like, Oh, I don't have business acumen. Oh, I don't know about all the tech. Oh, I, or I was an executive and I left work and all these people used to do all of that. And I, now I have to be the person doing it.
So templates, tools, strategy, marketing, sales, operations, all of that stuff that you might want to learn from a business coach and steal. I actually let people steal all of the stuff I've used in the 10 years of my coaching practice so that they can get a head start and they don't have to spend so much time being bogged down in the business side.
And that's leadthroughstrengths.com and look for the link called Tools for Coaches.
Brea: Love it. We are all about giving and sharing and abundance. And I just really hope that this information is helpful to you. So please take advantage of either of those offers. Both of those offers go out there and build your personal brand based on your strengths. The world needs what you have to give. So don't be shy in putting it out there.
Lisa: Yeah. The world needs it, and when they hear about it, they get excited. So you've got to give yourself a chance by actually putting it out instead of just saying, I'm an HR, next person.
Brea: Oh, my gosh. OK, we can do better. We need to do better. You deserve to do better. It's hard to find our place in the world. But once we do, once we can get clear on how we show up, how we can contribute, what our purpose is, what our role is in the bigger picture.
There's just so much freedom there for you to be able to step into that with confidence every day. I mean, no more imposter syndrome, right? Like when you know who you are, why you're there, the value that you bring, how you're making lives of the people around you or the processes around you or whatever it is that you're involved in.
When you're making that better, I mean, who doesn't want to live that life, you know? So you owe it to yourself to get clear about your value and your strengths and how to clearly communicate that so you can do what you do best.
Lisa: Yes. Yeah. Don't withhold it from the world. We need you. We want you. And Brea just dropped the mic. So we've got to go because she doesn't have a microphone anymore.
“Remember, hard work doesn’t have to feel hard. Aligned with your strengths, it actually feels easy, energizing, and fun!”
MEET YOUR CO-HOSTS
BREA ROPER
Communication | Woo | Activator | Futuristic | Connectedness
If you need a Strengths Hype Girl, for yourself or your team, connect with Brea at brearoper.com. She’s ready to deliver an inspirational keynote, empowering training, or transformational workshop. If you’re looking for an expert guide to support your internal Strengths efforts, reach out today!
LISA CUMMINGS
Strategic | Maximizer | Positivity | Individualization | Woo
To work with Lisa, check out team workshops and retreats at the Lead Through Strengths site. For 1:1 strengths or life coaching, check out the Get Coached link. For independent coaches, trainers, and speakers, get business tools support with our Tools for Coaches membership.
The Fine Print: This podcast is not sanctioned or endorsed by Gallup in any way. Opinions, views and interpretations of CliftonStrengths© are solely the beliefs of Lisa Cummings and Brea Roper.