Wendy McCallum (01:35)
Hello there, welcome back to The Coaching Edge. I'm your host, Wendy McCallum, and I am really excited about this topic today. Sometimes the best topics come just out of a casual conversation, and that's exactly where this one arose. I was chatting with Cassidy, who is my copywriter, who helps me with a lot of the copy that I do. Now,
I have only been using Cassidy for the last maybe 18 months or so. Before that, I was writing all my own copy and I still do a lot of my own copy, but she is just phenomenal. Anyway, Cassidy and I were talking and we are brainstorming topics for this podcast, which we often do in our weekly meeting or monthly meeting, sorry. And I started talking about this idea I had about vulnerability and talking about how we can use vulnerability in our marketing and how for a lot of the coaches that I support,
inside the BBB, the business building bootcamp and my other programming for coaches. This is something that feels really accessible to them, but also a little bit scary, but also often ends up being a really powerful step for them in terms of establishing a connection with their audience and also building programming that resonates with their audience. if you have ever worried that your story is not interesting enough,
or that sharing personal details and getting a little bit vulnerable will make you look unprofessional, this episode is for you. I really want to emphasize the fact that story is not a marketing trick. This isn't like some kind of gimmick. It's what makes you human and memorable in what is becoming an increasingly noisy space, honestly.
And it's something that I have always used and I don't think I've talked about it yet on this podcast, so it felt like a really like fulsome topic to talk about in an episode. So I'm gonna talk about how my own story has evolved and how that has really become my biggest marketing asset in terms of how I put myself out there to the people that I love to support in the various areas that I coach in.
And I'm also gonna talk about how to decide what to share and when to share. Those are important questions. And maybe in conjunction with that, some of the biggest mistakes that coaches make when they are leaning into their own story in their marketing and in their programming and how your story can directly shape.
your offers and your ideal clients. And I'm going to do all of this using my story. So I'm going to try to demonstrate this by sharing pieces of my story around how I've used my story in marketing as I go through this episode, just to demonstrate how this works. So why does story sell? Humans are wired for narrative. So we remember stories, not facts. And I think that's a really critical thing to...
to remember, is that we remember stories, not facts. And so in a coaching business, when you start sharing bits of your story, you are creating, first of all, something memorable, but also putting out there some proof of the possibility of transformation. Because so often as coaches, the area that we coach in is an area that we have ourselves struggled historically with and overcome and actually, you know,
had some significant personal growth in this area and transformation. And we often end up coaching in that area. And as you'll see, as I go through my own evolution as a coach, that was definitely the case for me. And I suspect it's the case for you as well. So when you share your story of your own journey in this particular area that you now support clients in, you are actually creating some proof of possibility for them. It helps your people see themselves in your journey. Story creates trust.
and relatability. And those are two things that are really impossible to manufacture just through strategy. These are difficult things to create without sharing of some personal information and being just a little bit vulnerable. And I really mean that, like a little bit of vulnerability goes a long way. It signals
safety for people, it helps your people know that they're in the right space and it also creates, as I said, that authenticity and relatability for you. So we're not talking about oversharing here. You do not need to go into, you know, all of the personal details of your life. That's not what I'm talking about at all. I'm talking about just a little bit of vulnerability. And what you will see, I think, as a coach is that as you do this, you over time start to build some
trust in exactly what I'm talking about that this is actually very helpful for you and actually helps you to connect with the people you want to connect with and also helps you to create the best programming possible and be the best coach you can be. And you're going to find yourself more comfortable sharing more probably as you go. That's certainly the way it has been for me. And there is a way for you to be transparent and to share some details of your life without being.
really raw and messy and unfiltered. Not that I necessarily have a problem with being messy sometimes, sometimes that happens, but there's a way to do this. So if you're listening to this and you're thinking, no way, that's never gonna be me. I don't wanna share anything about me on social media. I don't wanna post pictures of my personal life ever. I don't wanna talk about my kids, whatever that, I get all of that and I respect that. There is a way to do this. I promise you, that feels good to you. Okay, so.
As I said, I'm going to go through my own story here and I'm going to show you how each of my life stages since I became a coach, which was over 15 years ago now, has informed both my audience, so the people that I work with, my niche, and also the offers that I have created. So when I started, this is sort of the first chapter of my coaching career, the early coaching years we'll call them, which is probably the first like
five or so years of coaching. My kids were still really young. I think my kids were about six when I started coaching. So between six and 10, six and 11 for my kids, this is kind of the early coaching years for me. And I was really in the thick of parenting then. And I had left a very busy, very successful law practice after over 12 years to go back to school and try something different.
that felt more in alignment with my personal values and which I hoped was gonna help me to create the balance that I've been craving in my life between all of the responsibilities of being a new mom and also all of the goals that I had for myself in terms of work and feeling really purposeful and living a resonant, aligned, lit up life. So I decided to start coaching and.
At that time, I was really speaking to women who were in the same situation as me. to moms of young kids juggling work, relationships and identity. And a lot of what I was supporting women around related to food and how they fed their children and how they fed their family and fed themselves in the process and nourish themselves. And I was really very focused on this. I ended up publishing a couple of cookbooks in relation to this and
I used a lot of examples from my own life to connect to these women. I talked about like trying to get the kids on the bus in the morning and how I would lose my temper and then feel ashamed about that, you know, for the rest of the day and the pressure that I felt to do it all and do it all like perfectly and how that was really crushing for me and how that was impacting the way that I was coping and sleeping and all the rest of it.
and how I was using myself food as a way to really nourish myself and create a foundation for wellness for myself. And all of those personal shares helped me to build some real trust and helped those other women feel seen. And so it was the first time in my life, you can imagine as a lawyer, there's not a lot of personal sharing that goes on, the first time in my life that I had actually shared anything about myself.
that felt a little bit vulnerable to strangers. And I did it sparingly and I did it carefully, but I did do it. My kids were on the cover of my cookbooks. And I talked a lot about some of the things that I was doing as a parent and some of the roadblocks and obstacles that I was coming up against with my own kids when it came to keeping them well and healthy and balanced and just being a good parent. And I remember the very first most vulnerable thing that I shared.
was not right away, it was a few years in. I mean, at the time, Facebook was my main platform, social media platform. And I remember it was like, I can't remember the exact name of the day, but something like, know, international infancy loss and infancy and early pregnancy loss or some pregnancy loss, something like that. And I was seeing all these posts of women who were, you know, sharing.
whatever messaging around this day. And I thought to myself, there are lots of people now who follow me at this point, had thousands of followers on Facebook and lots of people who knew who I was. And I had never shared anything about my own story of pregnancy loss. And I had had, I've had four miscarriages and I have, I've.
one child who's adopted, one child who's a birth child, and I'd also been through the process of trying to adopt again and that had failed. So I had had lots of experience with loss when it came to trying to create a family. And I'm not quite sure what came over me, but I decided to share this on Facebook and I did it in a post. I think it was a video post and I was terrified and I felt sick the whole day. I had what we call a vulnerability hangover after sharing this information.
But I shared it because I knew it was gonna help other women feel less alone in all of this. And also it's my truth and it's my story and it's nothing that I'm ashamed of. I just, really was hopeful that it would give somebody else some hope because I was, frankly, I had kind of come through that and I felt like I had, you know, processed a lot of the grief and emotion. it had been a long time since my last miscarriage when I shared that information.
Anyway, that day I received so many personal messages from women in my inbox. It was incredible. And that post was incredibly popular. It got shared, it got commented on, it got all the things on social media. But really what mattered to me was those private messages that I got from women who said how helpful it was to hear that, to hear me share that part of my story that I'd never shared before. So was I doing that intentionally to try to?
you know, build my business or using that in any way to market? No, not at all. And frankly, most of the time now when I share my story, there's not even any thought, deliberate thought about marketing. I'm just thinking to myself, what's the story that goes along with this thing I'm talking about today? And how can I include that in, you know, this podcast episode or this post or whatever? And it's so it's it's usually quite organic in terms of how I do it. And at the time it was
there was zero intention behind that chair except to try to help other people. But it really did have an impact in terms of building some trust between me and my audience and some relatability for me as somebody who has probably showed up pretty professional and maybe not super warmly up until that point. So that was the first chapter, the early coaching years of parenting and overwhelm. And that's where I built my food practice and started working with women around stress management and a little bit of burnout.
Then of course my kids got older and they started to talk about leaving and going to university and all the rest of it. And I started preparing for empty nesting. I was also going through perimenopause at the time, which was a shit show. And I didn't really understand it. And there were lots of other things going on. I was using alcohol as way to cope. And I was just feeling very, very overwhelmed at the time. And I started to talk about...
how I was feeling. And I started to think about how the women that I had been working with and supporting when their kids were little were now in the same place that I was. And so their kids were getting older as well. I started asking myself questions like, Who am I going to be when I'm not an active mother anymore? Like when these kids are gone, what is my life going to look like? And how am going to feel about that? And who would I be outside of being a wife? And, you know, what if I
sort of lost of my own self in these decades of nurturing and taking care of other people and working and doing all the things. And I started talking to women who were entering that same space and who were about to enter into that transition of empty nesting as well, clients who were looking for some purpose beyond those roles that they had held for so long.
And that led to the, produced a program on burnout for women and started really focusing on this in my one-on-one coaching. I actually went back and got another coach training at that point from the Coactive Training Institute in general life coaching so that I could support women around those bigger questions. And I started talking about that and my programming started to reflect that.
Then of course, as many of you know, I'm alcohol free. I've been alcohol free now for almost eight years. And when I decided to address my relationship with alcohol, I opened up a completely new level of connection with the women out there in my audience who were struggling quietly. I think I also connected with another sort of a larger subset of people, but there were lots and lots of women in my existing audience who were struggling with that.
And I started to share that story in my podcast. started the Bite Size Balance podcast, which ran for four years at around that same time, a couple of years after I stopped drinking. And I started sharing my story there, which was terrifying because I was so worried about being judged. And I can tell you that I started very, very small in terms of what I shared. the beginning, I only...
talked about how I was a gray area drinker, somebody who was on the alcohol use disorder spectrum, didn't really like the way alcohol was making me feel, struggled to keep it out of my life, felt like it was really important to me in all the different areas, socializing, important in my relationship, my marriage at the time, important as a way to cope and relax and have fun and all the rest of it. And then talked about how I had finally...
taken a break from alcohol, what I had learned from that and why I had decided to just disengage from the substance altogether. So I was sharing like very sort of high level information about my life. As I went on and on and started working with more women and started to realize like actually me sharing this stuff is what is so helpful to them and it's what's making them feel like they can trust me and come to me and have me help them, which was my main goal was to help as many women as I could who were drinking in a way that didn't serve them.
I started to share more and I would say I'm still evolving in that area. I have shared stories on my podcast and in newsletters about moments when I was still a drinker that carried a lot of shame around and a lot more detail around that. that's been, again, that's been a big piece of me.
establishing and creating some connection with that group. It also led to the creation of a new program. So as I said, like your story not only informs what you share and how you market and who you connect with, but also the type of programming that you create. So from that, not only did I create a one-on-one coaching practice that was focused on helping women, particularly women who were really overwhelmed and stressed and struggling with burnout and also using alcohol as a way to cope.
but also to creating an online program, a six week program called Rewind that was extremely popular and that I still use when I work with alcohol clients one-on-one. that wouldn't have happened if I hadn't gone through that experience myself and I wouldn't have had people coming in to Rewind and coming into the, used to run these three to five day free challenges and had lots and lots of women come into those as a result of me sharing honestly and vulnerability, some of my story. Then,
As some of you may know, more recently, I went through a separation and some real rediscovery after a very long marriage. I was married for almost 23 years with my ex-husband and the father of my kids for about 25 years. And that has been in the process now for the last couple of years. And honestly, there was no way I was sharing anything about this for the first like...
16, 17 months. I just kept it to myself because I was still actively processing all of this. And we're to talk about sharing from your scars versus sharing from your unhealed wounds. I was not ready to be sharing and talking about that until very recently. ⁓ And I waited until I was really feeling very grounded and had a lot more sort of peace around all of this before I started talking about it.
If you're on my newsletter list, then you will know that very recently, like maybe a month ago, I shared this information and talked about how that had led me to create another sort of subniche in my one-on-one coaching practice where I support women who are going through separation and divorce after long relationships and helping them figure out who they are now and who they want to be on the other side of all of this, but also just navigating that very difficult
process without drama and without pity, just with me standing beside them and helping them go through it in a way that feels the most aligned for them, in a way that when they look back on this time in their life, they're going to feel good about how they did it, which was my main goal going through this process myself. And I'm actually very proud of myself for how I did that. It was very hard, but it was worth it. So.
That led to all of this, everything that was going on in my marriage, all the feelings I was having around, I in the right place? All the questions around empty nesting and who will I be next and all the rest of it led to me creating this program that I launched actually before I started talking about this separation called Change Your F-ing Life. And that was, it's a really popular program. I use it with my one-on-one clients when I'm coaching them. It's something that is part of the...
package when you work with me privately. And now I'm going to be providing that to all of my separation and divorce clients as well. again, my story, my experience informed the creation of the programming. And then finally, like the last chapter, which most of you are aware of, and this kind of is happening all through all of this, is that as I built more experience as a coach, as my business became more successful, as I figured more things out, as I put more systems in place in my business,
I started to get questions from other coaches asking me how I was doing this, what the keys were to making money and sort of having some balance as a small business entrepreneur coach. And that, those conversations made me realize that this was really like the next part of my story.
in terms of the evolution of my practice. And I started sharing what I'd learned, including a lot of the mindset shifts that had happened for me, a lot of the mistakes that I made early on. And again, this is me getting a little bit vulnerable with people. And I started sharing that. That led to the creation of my coaches list. You're probably on that list. That's where my newsletters go out just to coaches who are in the first five years or so of building their businesses. And I started sharing in those newsletters and on this podcast that started a couple of years ago.
little bits about my own story in building my successful coaching practice. And that is also where the business building bootcamp was born from. you know, having those conversations with coaches and then starting to do one-on-one coaching with coaches around their business led me to think like there's got to be a better way to do this. There's got to be a way to make this more affordable for coaches, more accessible for coaches, give them all of the things that they need and all of the things that I already have done.
so that they can get there faster and they can avoid the mistakes that I made and they can start making money a whole lot quicker. And the business building bootcamp or the BBB as I call it is really the program that reflects everything I wish I'd had when I was starting out. And so that's another example of my story literally shaping both my niche and my offers.
And of course, there's been evolution on that side of my business since then as well, in that I've created the CCC, which is the coaching course creator program, because online courses become a huge piece of my business as a successful coach. And I wanted to create a program that helped other coaches create an online program. And then also more recently, the CCSI, which was beta tested in the spring and which is going to run again at some point. I'm really excited to run it again, which is the Confident Coaching Skills Intensive, where I was actually
sharing my story as a coach and my evolution as a coach and how I built my confidence in coaching in a really flexible and fluid way, which is what allowed me to shift my niche and to create new offers over the course of the 15 years. Like I've just explained to you, it's the confidence I have that I can coach anybody on anything. And the CCSI is designed to help other coaches build that confidence themselves so that they can create more flexibility in their own practices and
So
All of that hopefully will help to demonstrate for you how you can use your own story, not only in your marketing, but also in creating your offers and most importantly, in connecting with your people. That is when people come into the BBB, one of the main things people say to me is, look, I have been listening to your stuff for a long time. I feel like I know you. I hear that all the time on discovery calls. I feel like I know you. I listen to you every week.
And the same thing happened with my other podcasts that I had around the personal coaching. I would get on discovery calls with clients around alcohol or burnout or big transitions. And they would say, I feel like I know you. They knew my kids' names. They knew what was going on in my life. They knew the things I was struggling with. And they knew my story. And that was really, really helpful. So lessons.
from my own sort of story shifts is that your niche is going to evolve and you need to let it. So you can see from my story how much my niche has evolved over the last 15 years. You don't have to cling to your original story or your original audience. Most of the women who followed me in the very early days of my coaching practice who I maybe helped them.
get some more confidence and figure out some better systems to feed their families healthy, real food without like going, you know, crazy in the process. They're not still in my audience. Some of them are because some of them evolved with me, but many of them didn't and that's okay. If you allow your business to grow with you, your audience is gonna evolve too. Your people are gonna evolve as well. So that's the first thing. niche is gonna evolve, let it evolve.
that is just part of this business. And I say this to my really new coaches that I'm working with in the BBB, like, let's try to get some clarity on your niche right now, but know that this will absolutely change. So we are not trying to nail this down and perfect it right now. It's going to change as your story changes, as you coach more, and as you experience more things just in your own life. The other thing is you get to curate your story. Like you get to decide what to share and what not to share.
and when to share it, you know? So what to keep private and like I said, when I was talking about my recent separation and divorce, you know, when you're comfortable sharing it, like when you feel ready for that. Again, just a reminder, share from your scars, not from your wounds. So you're looking to, you know, you do that little litmus test before you share something. Like, how do I feel about this thing? Does it cause me great anxiety to be talking about this? Is it something that still feels really raw to me and like, do I?
find myself every time I'm thinking about it, like well up with tears. A good test that I used was like, am I gonna cry when I'm talking about this or will I be able to talk about this without crying? Personally for me, that's a good litmus test as to whether it is still a wound or it is healed over and is a scar. But you get to decide. And what you don't wanna be doing obviously is processing live on the internet. That's not at all what I'm talking about. Also remember that your story is going to inform your offers.
And I think the best offers come from your own experience, honestly. The best programs are often the ones that we wish we'd had when. So we look back to our like past selves and ask ourselves, what would have been super helpful for us then? And when I'm teaching inside the CCC, which again is that coaching course creator program, that's the question I'm asking the coaches when we're trying to figure out the various sort of milestones.
in the journey to transformation, I'm often asking them to go back to their own experience in that area of change and trying to identify what were the big things that I needed to learn or the big challenges that I needed to overcome in order to get to where I got to. Okay, so that is how we create very authentic programs in my mind. My programming is very authentic. It is very true to me. And if you're inside the BBB, you know this, I am...
I'm not about wasting time. I am not about, you know, manifesting every day. I'm about like getting down to business, doing the real work, spending the time on the things that actually get you closer to the money, but also to the joy as a small business owner so that you can actually make money and stay in profit and therefore stay afloat as a small business owner. And that's been my story. That's how I've done it. Connection is more important than perfection.
People are not looking for a polished expert. People are looking for somebody who's been there and who gets it. So realness is going to build resonance faster than authority ever could, than expertise ever could. And I think that's a really important point here. And the other thing to remember is that story is what builds community. So it doesn't just build connection, it builds community.
Sharing your truth, your story in the right way, the right amount gives other people space to say me too. And that happens all the time inside the BBB. Obviously we have a community in there of coaches and we all are sharing about our own experiences, things that went well, things that didn't go well when a coach comes on to office hours and is stressing about a client interaction that happened last week. I can almost always come up with a personal story of my own where a similar thing happened and explain to them.
how I handled that and what I learned from that. And there are often other coaches who can do the same thing once I share. So here are the practical ways that you can use your story going forward in your coaching business. And I want you to start thinking about things like how am I using my own personal story in my marketing? Could I practice, for example, for the next couple of months, just practice always leading?
with some little snippet of story. So if you're crafting a newsletter, start it with, I remember when, or just yesterday, this happened to me, right? Or last week in office hours, a coach asked me this. So just challenge yourself to bring story into the beginning of every piece of copy that you write. This is how it becomes kind of automatic, I think, for you. And then bridge into whatever your teaching point is. So there is a balance here.
You know, you have to make sure that you're not always talking about yourself and only sharing your own story. You want to be making sure that you're leaving space for whatever the relevant teaching point is or coaching point is that comes out of whatever that piece of story is that you shared. And I think that your story can become the bridge to that really nicely in marketing copy. Also ask yourself like.
How have I used my own experience to build my offers and my programming? And is there something that I have been through and worked my way through and come out the other side better for that might actually be something that my clients have also struggled with or are currently being challenged by and I could actually create a program and help them through that? Building offerings around the transformations that you've personally lived, like I've said in all the various chapters of my own life.
has been really, really effective. building that program that basically fills that gap of what you wish you had had at the time, what would have been helpful to you at the time. And then also in conversations. So you know I'm big on conversations in here. I think this is where all the sales really happen is in actually having live conversations with people, which is why if you're listening to this podcast and you would love to get to know me, find out a little bit about...
my offers and how I support coaches and see if it's a good fit for you. You can always get on a call with me. You could always book a call with me. I'm happy to chat with all coaches because sales always start in conversations. That's how we build. We build relationships first. And so this is the time to be sharing story in the actual conversations that you're having as well with your clients. So you can use story in coaching. Now I know there's a whole world of coaching that says never share anything personal. I am not from that school.
I find that building that trust and that relationship and that heart in a coaching session happens when you share story. Again, you share sparingly, you don't wanna take over the session, you don't wanna dominate, you wanna make sure that you leave all the space for your client, but you share story where that is gonna create some trust, where that is gonna create a moment of connection, where that is gonna make your client feel like me too, I'm not alone in this thing.
So use it in conversations, coaching conversations, sales conversations, use your story. Common mistakes coaches make really quickly, oversharing obviously, like just going overboard with this. You have to be careful with what you share and how much you share, but story is really, really effective. Getting stuck in an old story that's no longer aligned with the brand is also something that I see happen. You get to change your story as your story changes, right?
making it all about them and not connecting it to their client's own experience. So again, there's like a nuanced balance to this whole thing, which I have all the faith that everybody listening can do very effectively. And I guess like feeling like they have to stick with the story that they've always had. For a long time, my story was I'm a happily married mom of two young kids who is really healthy.
And then at some point I started to get more honest with myself. I realized, wait, maybe I'm not as happily married. Maybe I'm not as healthy. Maybe this alcohol really is a problem. And maybe I actually don't know who the hell I am anymore. Now that my kids are getting ready to leave the nest, right? My story changed because what felt true to me at one point in time no longer felt true to me. So you're allowed to evolve your story. It's not static. It is really your most powerful marketing and coaching tool, I think.
but only if you let it grow with you. So, you know, a new life chapter, if you're entering into something new right now, if you're going through a big transition or change, know that this can become the seed of your next offer, your next program. And also it can and should really inform your marketing and how you connect with your people. So I hope that that...
encouraged you and got you thinking about how often or how little you are sharing any of your own personal story and whether there might be some new fun juicy offers that you would love to coach that you can create based on your own story and what you've been through that you haven't created yet and whether there is you know a new way for you to connect with your audience that you haven't tried yet based on your story. Again remember share from your
scars not from your wounds and also share sparingly and make sure that you've got this in a nice balance and that you're sharing in a way that's deliberate and makes sense with whatever it is you're trying to teach, show or however you're trying to connect with your audience. I am hoping to have Cassidy come onto the podcast and talk more like the nuts and bolts of how to incorporate story because she is a masterful
a copywriter and she uses storytelling in her copywriting all the time. She's actually also a songwriter, which is kind of a cool fact about her. So she loves stories. So my hope is to get Cassidy on a future episode to talk about this. But for today, I just wanted to share my own experience with this and and some thoughts again that came out of that conversation with Cassidy. So again, if you're listening to this podcast and you're thinking to yourself, man, it is time for me to really get down to business in my business because I'm not doing that and I am not making the profit that I want. I'm not serving.
the clients that I want to be serving, and I really am committed to making a go of this whole thing. You're not alone. That is how most coaches feel. I would love to meet you. Come on out to the next BBB Open House, wendymcallum.com forward slash BBB. You'll find the details there. You can register for that or connect with me. Just send me a note. You can always connect with me through my website or through social media. I'm at Wendy McCallum Coach on Instagram.
and let me know that you would like to chat and I would be so delighted to sit down with you on a Zoom and get to know you a little bit better. Hope this episode was helpful. Hope you're having a great week. I'll see you next time on The Coaching Edge. Thanks for listening.
