How to Build Trust Around Yourself Versus a Program
Your business, like any person, has its own unique personality.
And did you know there’s one key quality your business can demonstrate that keeps your customers coming back again and again?
If you want to learn…
What this quality is
How to structure your business to support it
Leverage it in marketing so sales come easy
…listen to the latest episode of Empathy Rising and I’ll walk you through it.
This episode will really help you get your side hustle headed in the right direction from the get-go.
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Show Notes:
Hey, Risers. Welcome to episode 172 of Empathy Rising. I am recording at eight o'clock at night from my closet, as usual. I'm always recording from my closet, just not normally at eight o'clock at night. It has been one of those weeks. I'm looking forward to August being over.
It's funny because I just talked about how I took all this time off, but coming back hasn't been as easy as I would hope. If you have questions about that, make sure to hit me up in the Facebook group and I will be candid in answering.
In this week's episode, we are back with part two of the program versus you being the main feature of your offer. If you haven't listened to last week's episode, you might want to hit pause and go back to that one. In there we talked about the difference between selling yourself and selling a program. It was much more conceptual. What do we need to think about when we're offering ourselves as the main selling feature versus our program as the main selling feature?
Today, we're going to get much more into the nuts and bolts, much more technical on how we sell different things. Last week, if you remember back, we talked about the struggle with visibility for clinicians, and that's going to continue to come up today. We're talking about the actual how-to’s.
We also know some of the pros and cons of selling yourself versus selling your offer. A brief reminder, (I want you to go back and listen to last week's if you haven't) selling yourself makes the sale easier. People are always craving higher touch and people are always craving accessibility to the person they want to learn from. Having access to you as the main selling feature is going to make selling your program easier.
You can also charge higher prices for that because it's a direct exchange for your time. The con of that is scalability. You only have so much time you're running into the same problem in your practice working one-on-one.
If you create a high-touch offer, there are certain cases where you can get yourself into the same issue. Even though you're doing online income, you can still be trapping yourself in time-for-money, which is one of the things we work hard to make sure we're not doing inside of Side Hustle.
Selling your program is the flip side of this. Selling your program means you're emphasizing your curriculum and not access to you, which makes your scalability factor way higher. You can sell way more of that because your touch is less, but to a new audience who doesn't know you yet, and doesn't believe that your curriculum will help them, those are harder sells. Because it's lower touch, it's a lower price. It's just a trade-off of what you're looking for.
It puts you into a volume conversation. Do you want to be higher volume or a lower volume? I've talked a little bit about that on previous episodes, and if you're not quite sure what I mean by the volume-based conversation go back to episodes that came out in July and August, and you'll hear me go into it at length.
One of the reasons a lot of people shy away from high touch is because of what I just mentioned: their practices and what they do one-on-one is already so high touch. One of the reasons they're looking into online income is because they want something completely different.
They're either on the brink of burnout or have been burnt out and back again many times and they don't want to replicate a high-touch nature in their business. I understand that. The thing that I say in response to that is high touch in a coaching program is way different than high touch in the therapy room. It's something we've got to be cognizant of, but what we want to get into today is sales.
Another reason that people shy away from high touch, especially clinicians, is that they're nervous about selling themselves. A couple of things come up here, imposter syndrome. Who am I to be offering this thing? Which I think is interesting because you guys are some of the most qualified people on the planet.
Between your advanced degrees and how many hours you need to collect to get licensed, and then how many certifications you invest in post-licensure, our industry therapists are some of the most qualified people out there to be helping others.
We've got to be able to reframe this imposter syndrome and one of the things that I help you do is repurpose and repackage your clinical skills. It is really fun for me when we're working together, my students and I, to say, "now, what does this remind you of?" and they'll be like, "oh, that's linking when you're doing a therapy group" and I'm like, "exactly, it's the same as the clinical skill. We're just using it in a different space".
I'm like, "Now what is this?" and they're like, "oh, mirroring, or reflecting or summarizing". These very basic counseling skills and therapy skills that we learned a long time ago, I just show you how to use them outside the therapy room. I think that cuts back on that imposter syndrome.
The other thing that comes up when clinicians get into selling themselves, "here's why you want to work with ME" is the blank slate issue that is ingrained in us. I know newer clinicians and even just clinicians who are practicing in a more modern way are utilizing self-disclosure much more than some seasoned clinicians or are more comfortable with self-disclosure than more seasoned clinicians, (of course, using it therapeutically).
They're still probably not sharing intimate details of their story or how they came to solve problems for themselves, which is a big no-no in therapy. This is what we rely on when we're selling our online programs. I call these ‘Gandalf’ stories and ‘Frodo’ stories.
When we are new to selling ourselves, we tend to be the main character for our stories (and I'm going to go deeper into that during the selling portion of this episode), we need to be able to tell our story in the online space. I know that is a big barrier when people start selling themselves.
Because I love you guys, I want to call gentle attention to this because once we start to understand the differences between our therapeutic work and our online income stream work, it becomes clear why things are okay in coaching that technically aren't okay in therapy.
Sometimes even though we understand the difference and we're clear with the distinction, we can still fall back on these habitual patterns as a way to either hide or play small. "I'm not used to sharing my story, so it's uncomfortable, therefore I'm not going to do it" or "yes, I know who I am in the clinical room and I'm very confident in my therapy skills, but I don't know who I am outside of the clinical room and now I feel like an imposter".
All of that is very valid, but in certain instances, we need to push through that fear. I love you, and that's why I want to point that out. One thing that I do believe in is the fastest way to make decent money in your side hustle is to go higher touch.
Now I certainly help my students do membership sites. I certainly help my students do courses and info products and lower touch programs. In fact, I myself am launching my side hustle... I go back and forth. It's either a cheap group program or it's an expensive membership site but it is definitely lower touch than side hustle is for sure.
Low touch can definitely work for you, but as I mentioned, just a minute ago, it can take longer, especially with a brand new audience to make sales with a lower touch offer. I know it sounds counterintuitive that it's harder to sell low touch, but it is.
It's easier to sell higher touch. This is why I love group programs. They solve the one-to-one problem and get you one-to-many, and your higher touch, so your customers want to buy that, but we make sure that we are taking into consideration that time factor.
You get to serve lots of people in an hour and a half or two hours a week and charge decent money for that. You're still feeling like your workload is way lighter. I want you to make the decision that's best for you. If you tell me, "I want to go lower touch", awesome.
We will make a plan. We will get you to the point where low touch is selling, and we'll get you to the point where low touch is working for you and making you the money that you want.
But the fastest way is definitely to go higher touch, which means selling more of yourself. The number one element regardless of if you sell yourself in a higher touch offer, or if you sell your program is trust. People do not pay for things without trust.
This is why, when we're all buying clothes online…what did I just buy? I bought some overalls. I'm reading the reviews, I check the size chart to see what size I'm supposed to be, but then I go read the reviews, does this fit true to size? Did people like it? Was anybody saying they returned it?
It doesn't matter what we're buying. We still want a sense of trust in what we're purchasing. This comes down to the food we're eating. A lot of us are conscious of, where is it sourced from, and what's the carbon footprint of our food?
Beauty products, a lot of us care about what ingredients are in our beauty products, and if they have estrogenoids and all of this kind of stuff. These are things that we're paying attention to when we purchase. That's something that I think could be a really good exercise for us to do (pen and paper note app on your phone or you can just think about it) what's the last thing you purchased?
I'm talking even like a candy bar at the grocery store to maybe you just bought a home or maybe you just bought a new car or a big purchase. Think about not only what you purchased and why you purchased it, but I would love for you to explore the role that trust played in that.
Did you buy her shoes because you've always bought her shoes, because it tastes good and it's the chocolate that you like better than dove or whatever? I'm making this up, but we become brand loyal because of trust. Those smaller things that we often don't necessarily consider, we don't think about why we bought it or we don't consciously consider the choice, like a candy bar. I would urge you to explore that.
Is it brand loyalty? Is it because you trust the way it's going to taste? Think about if you're driving cross-country and you're hungry, you're going to pull into McDonald's because you know what you're going to get.
Doesn't matter where, if you're in Oklahoma or Maine, a Big Mac is a Big Mac. We have this trust with where we shop. Then of course, if we purchase bigger things like a home or a vehicle, we're often putting trust in other people like realtors or home inspectors.
If we're buying a car, we might read consumer reports or safety reports on that particular vehicle before we purchase it. We're always trying to bolster our confidence in a purchase through trust.
One of the things that I think can help you become a better salesperson and sell your program better is to pay attention to how you buy, and how you consume. I won't go so far as to say nine times out of 10, but a lot of times your ideal customer is a version of you.
This might even be true with your therapy clients. It's probably, for a lot of you, true for your ideal customers for your online programs. If you think about how you make purchasing decisions, it very well may be true or similar to how your ideal customer is going to make purchasing decisions.
Your audience likely won't buy anything from you... maybe a $27 ebook or something, or a $10 printable - we don't need a lot of trust for those types of things, but for anything that's going to be substantial, they're not going to purchase it from you without a sense of trust.
The difference is; what are we cultivating trust in? To make the sale, do we need to cultivate trust in you or are we cultivating trust in your program? Just like last week, what's the difference here? What is the selling feature now that we've identified the selling feature?
We need to figure out how we build trust in that selling feature. Without trust in either you or your program, you're not going to get sales. Unless it's super cheap and it's just an impulse buy. That's not going to build your business. That's not going to help you shrink your caseload.
Any type of substantial course membership group program, anything like that, if you don't have trust, you're very likely not going to have any sales. Those who do purchase are going to have buyer's remorse because they're going to say, "oh, is this really the right thing?"
I know a lot of us have bought going back to the clothes online example. We try and do our due diligence, but then it comes and the fabric isn't what we thought, the color isn't what we thought, and the fit isn't what we thought. Then we're bummed.
If we're assertive consumers, we will return it, but a lot of us are people pleasers. Then we'll just sit there and wear the sweater that's two sizes too big, or doesn't fit, or isn't the right color because we bought it and we won't even bother to return it because we're trying to be good girls and boys but we're still going to hate the fact that we bought.
Think about those bigger purchases, like a home or a car, and that buyer's remorse has to last for years because it's not something that we can return or it's not a purchase we can get out of easily. We don't want that experience to happen with our customers. It is difficult to build a business like this because if you have a money-back guarantee on your course and you have people purchasing, but returning right then you're actually not making a profit.
If you're only selling these cheap info products that are 10 bucks, or 20 bucks, it's really difficult to make a business out of that because the amount of volume that you need to make substantial money from that is astronomical. Without trust in either you as the selling feature or your program as the selling feature, you're going to end up with a time-sucking hobby. I know that sounds harsh, but this is key.
We don't want to spend all of this time conceptualizing a program and then perhaps even going so far as building the audience for the program if we then can't sell the program. Revenue, and money, are the lifeblood of a business. Otherwise, it's a hobby. When you've built this trust, easy sales become easy.
If you've heard me talk about this golf analogy before, (which is hilarious because I've never golfed in my life) the goal of golf is to hit the ball from the tee and get it into the hole and driving is what's getting the ball closer and closer to the hole.
If you drive the ball, the ball ends up close and it's a simple putt to get it into the hole. Your marketing should be like driving the ball, and sales should be like an easy putt. How do we build trust? Trust comes through marketing. You've heard me talk about trust a million times.
When that trust is established, sales become a simple, easy tap and the ball goes in. A simple, easy invitation and your audience is, "absolutely, sign me up". We have to have that trust established.
The other thing that happens is you get repeat customers. Let's say you sell a course and then, later on, you want to develop a group program or vice versa. You start with a group program and later on, you want to offer a mastermind or a course off the back end.
If somebody had trust in you, you got into your program, and then was pleased with that program because you delivered what you said you would because you have integrity, then they're more likely to buy your next thing. They're going to be like, "heck yeah, sign me up for that. They're amazing. I love their work". People will continue to buy from you.
The other thing that happens is not only will people continue to buy from you, but they will also send people your way. They'll become referrals, your street team, and your brand ambassadors. They'll be like, "you want to learn how to garden? You've got to take this course. It was the best one I've ever taken" or, " so-and-so's group program opens in a couple of weeks. It was the best decision I made".
When you have trust, sales become easy. Customers buy more of your stuff on repeat. Customers refer their friends, their colleagues, and their family to you. This ultimately culminates in what we call brand reputation. Just like a Hershey's bar, we can trust Hershey's.
We can trust McDonald's—as gross as that sounds. That brand has a reputation, and if the reputation is favorable, then the business grows. Trust is the key to all sales. How do we build the different types of trust?
Just like last week, we have to decide what are we building trust in. Are you selling yourself, or are you selling the program? Are you offering more high touch or lower touch? Are you going for revenue faster? Are you going for scalability over time? Neither is better or worse. It's just, what is your preference?
If you are building trust in yourself, let's start there. What you're basically doing is highlighting your personal qualifications. Why am I qualified to guide you through this? This may be more of a methodology, which I dive deeper into in Space Holder. If you're curious, "what's a methodology?", go grab Space Holder and I'll teach you.
This may be more of a methodology, which is “I've been through this", or "I've done it this way. I would love to teach you my process". Your personal qualifications can be your personal experience. I know that's new for clinicians because most of our qualifications are, "I have an advanced degree in X, Y, Z, and 45 certificates and 25,000 hours" and whatever.
Those are all great personal qualifications to emphasize as well. But in the coaching space, we can't forget that your personal experience has value and merit sometimes above your degrees. Sometimes somebody wants to learn from a person who's actually done it.
What else is cool is these personal qualifications, these master's degrees, these doctoral degrees, all of that, those are selling features that will pump you up and boost your credibility as well, because we know coaching isn't regulated. A lot of us clinicians will be upset about that.
"Oh, how can these people be out there practicing?" and I get it, but if somebody is seriously shopping and considering a coach and they're looking at one sales page and they see the person has personal experience like, "Ooh, great" and then they see that you have personal experience and a litany of all these other credentials, and who comes to the top?
The cream of the crop floats. You are going to stand out in the marketplace. Who cares if coaching isn't regulated? You have integrity and you have qualifications that make you rise to the top of the market, be selected more readily, and be valued more highly. When you're building trust in yourself, it's about highlighting your personal qualifications.
The second thing that you can do is mention similar work that you've done before. When you are new to online income, this can be a little tricky because the similar work you've done before is probably therapy.
Once you've had students go through your courses, members go through your membership site, or people go through your group program, we have no confidentiality in terms of sharing stories of people who've gone through our coaching programs so we can share those more readily.
Also, we don't have regulations on testimonials in the coaching field. People who are pleased and who have a lot of trust in you, and a lot of trust in your programs will very readily share testimonials and they'll be so happy to share their experiences.
Once you have a couple of rounds under your belt or a couple of students under your belt, that's easier. In this limbo time, before you have students who've gone through your online programs, we have to get a little creative about how we can share similar work, and we can still do this ethically 100%.
One way to do this is what I call character references or character testimonials. These can be from friends and colleagues who can talk not about necessarily that they've worked with you in therapy, but they can talk about things like your work ethic, your dedication, and the way they've seen you strive to be the best in your profession.
It's not necessarily about the work that you've done, but it's about how they've observed you in your work. That's not violating any kind of confidentiality.
Another thing that you can do (which is a little grayer, so you get to decide) is you can share client journeys, and you take out all identifying information. The way I describe this is like making an amalgamation of your clients.
If you see 10 women a week who are in their late thirties, who are all dealing with anxiety, you can probably compile enough of their stories and they have enough that's similar about their path with you in the therapy room that you can create a composite. You can create an amalgamation that doesn't relay any client information, but still shows the type of work you do.
As I said, that's totally up to you. If that feels like, "nope, that's too close to ethical boundaries. I'm not doing that", awesome, good for you. But if you can see, "oh, okay. I see what she's saying here. I'm not actually revealing anything, but I'm creating an avatar, (so to speak) of my therapy client and describing that work. I'm cool with that", then run with it.
There are a couple of different ways that we can highlight the work we do. When you're building trust in yourself, it's about first highlighting your personal qualifications. Secondly, demonstrating how you've done similar work before. Thirdly, the storytelling I hinted at this a little bit ago, but I called these ‘Gandolph’ stories and ‘Frodo’ stories, or you can run with Mario stories and Luigi stories or fill in your main character, side character of your choice.
In the Frodo stories, you are the main character. It is how you accomplished something. How you went through a transformation. I know that these are the ones that are going to be the most uncomfortable because that goes back to that whole 'blank slate' issue that we have as therapists; not wanting to reveal stuff about ourselves, but these are really impactful.
It shows not only how you're qualified, but it shows you have personal experience. You have been there, you can walk your talk, essentially. Frodo stories are the type of stories that you're likely going to have in the beginning, because you don't have people who've gone through your programs.
You can do a Gandalf story, like I said, doing the composite of your clients or that avatar of your therapy clients, but if you don't want to go there, then you're going to be telling stories from the first person where you are the main character.
You're talking about your journey. Until you have students, members, and group program people to share their stories. That is what a Gandolph story is. It's where you are in the role of the guide.
"Let me tell you about Jenny. Jenny did X, Y, and Z. Here's how I came in as the helper of Jenny", or "here's how I facilitated Jenny", but you're sharing Jenny's results. You're not the main character, you're the helper. Both of these stories help you sell and help you build trust. I strategically use them at different times. You can see that Gandalf stories are a little bit more difficult when you don't have students to share their stories yet, but you can do that avatar, as I said, that composite or that amalgamation of people you've worked with without revealing personal information.
You can lean on Frodo stories, the main character stories for a while until you do have your own students. This is how you build trust in you, "You want to work with me because I'm personally qualified through experience and education, expertise. I've done similar work before this, and here's my personal story and stories of how I've helped others". That is how you build trust.
You also sell the outcome that you give. It's phrases like, "when you work with me, you will...." "When you learn to garden from me, you will learn my approach to beautiful blue-ribbon-winning roses". It's emphasizing when they work with you and how they will learn your approach or learn what you can pass on.
Building trust in your program, the process is very similar, but remember the focus is changing. Many of the techniques are similar, but instead of emphasizing yourself, you're emphasizing the program.
Instead of highlighting your expertise and why people should work with you, you're going to highlight the system that you've developed, "My six-step process to..." is still you. It's still your thought leadership.
It's still your intellectual property, but rather than saying, "I will guide you through this" it's "This process helps you move through...", or "this system is designed to..." See how that emphasis is just slightly different?
The other thing that you're going to highlight when you're highlighting your program or selling something low-touch is the inclusions. The templates, the workbooks, the community, and the Facebook group - that is the emphasis of the program. It's the program system, the program framework, the program process, and all of the pieces of the program.
When somebody wants to work with you, and when they're shopping for a high touch, these inclusions are so much less important. They're like, "oh cool. I get a workbook", "oh, cool. I get this, but how many calls do I get with you?", or "how many times touch points or times do I get to see you?" We don't emphasize these inclusions.
It's the exact opposite when we're emphasizing the program, it's "oh, what's included? Oh, cool. There are templates, there are scripts, there are spreadsheets". We play up the inclusions in something that is lower touch.
Instead of saying, "when you work with me", you emphasize the outcomes that the program or the curriculum gives. It's sentences like "when you finish this program, you will..." The promise you're developing is when you complete this curriculum you will have mastered the process of growing blue ribbon roses.
Instead of, "you will understand the way that I grow blue ribbon roses" it's "you will master the process. You will have a replicable system to grow blue ribbon roses year after year" or something like that. As I said, it's very similar in process, but you're emphasizing different things. It's nuanced for sure.
I hope you guys can see the difference between when you are selling yourself you emphasize X, Y, and Z, and when you're selling your program, you emphasize A, B, and C. Of course there are different scenarios when this happens. Higher touch, you're going to want to sell you. Lower touch, you're going to want to sell your program or your curriculum.
I hope that this has been helpful for you. If learning these nuances is fun and helps you get a clearer picture of the inner workings of how online income has a strategy to it, you're definitely going to want to sign up for my free masterclass.
It helps you make all these important decisions. It helps you weigh these pros and cons and make these evaluations before you start building your side hustle. When you have this stuff mapped out ahead of time, you're going to save time, you're going to save effort, you're going to save energy, and you're going to save money because you're going to know where you're going and you're not going to have to have all these side steps or detours.
You can register for this masterclass over at marissalawton.com/masterclass. Super simple and super easy. We will be back next week where I'm talking about what to focus on first. What's that first action step? I will talk with you then, and until then, keep on rising.
