Every coach sells the same thing: hope.
Whether you’re in the fitness business, the podcast business, the mindset business or the advertising business, HOPE is your product.
Some coaches understand this; some are fixated on selling their “method”. Our mission as professional mentors is to paint a vision of a brighter future, and then get the clients closer to that future.
Our primary tool is communication. We must constantly publish, speak, moderate or otherwise communicate using the CALM formula.
Our content, seminars and coaching should always fall into one of these buckets:
Clarity: help the client see exactly where they want to go, and why it’s better than where they are.
Assurance: help them believe they can get there.
Leadership: help them see — and stay on — the best path to get there, as fast as possible, with minimum pain.
Movement: help them take the next step.
I’ve trained many mentors and coaches to use the CALM formula in times of crisis. It works extremely well in acute application (when trouble arises, you can put all four pieces of the CALM formula in one email.) But on a meta level, the CALM formula is a useful tool for planning your content, courses and speaking events.
Some examples of what material to put in each bucket:
Clarity: a “perfect day” exercise; numerical goals (20lbs lost or $100,000 in NOB); a short-term target to hit (5 new clients); or an easily-understandable but unquantifiable goal (“wake up feeling refreshed”). My book, The Simple Six, is about Clarity.
Rule of thumb: the client should be able to explain this goal to a friend in their own words.
Assurance: podcast interviews with successful clients; another client’s onboarding process; pictures of your higher-level clients in action, awarding your higher-level clients onstage at your events.
My next book, Millionaire Gym Owner, is about Assurance.
Rule of thumb: share your losses and other people’s wins to build trust.
Leadership: content; courses; interactive webinars; roadmaps; outcome audits. Test and measure how best to keep the clients on track with minimal distractions.
Rule of thumb: don’t bury people. Use only the information that will get them to their goal. Eliminate drag.
Movement: roadmaps, mentorship, coaching, accountability calls…whatever it takes to get them to act.
Rule of thumb: longform communication might be necessary to help them clarify their goal, but shorter (and more frequent) communication is usually necessary to help them achieve it.
If you use the formula, you will:
1 – balance your content between Clarity, Assurance, Leadership and Movement
2 – make sure you don’t skip any parts. It’s easy to go really deep in the “Clarity” content and forget to include some Assurance.
3 – have more content to post
4 – have an easy posting schedule to follow.
The key to all of this, though, is that you actually get the clients results.
Some coaches understand the value of selling hope, and do it really well…but then don’t actually get their clients closer to where they want to be. That’s not us. Use the CALM formula to inspire, educate and act!
