The 7 Rules Of Recruitment: What A $150/Hr Branding Coach Taught Me

What I do is help eliminate the overwhelm in your marketing efforts so you can have the business of your dreams. I truly believe in strengths- based leadership. What that means is you can push off to the side the stuff you don't like doing. Whether it’s creating content, Facebook ads, engaging on Instagram, etc… Whatever you don’t like doing, I’m a true believer that that stuff should be outsourced. (If you don’t like doing it, you’re probably not that great at it!) If you can hone in on what you're good at and do MORE of it, you can run a fulfilling business and reach a mastermind level of doing what you’re good at ALL the time.

This is important to my story because I went to school for English Literature and Women’s Studies. I thought to myself, “When the heck am I ever gonna use this?” I’m telling you- I use it every day in all the writing I do. All the dots connect in our stories.. it pulls together who we are. Pay attention to those signs- they’re there for all of us. We have points in our lives that illuminate what we’re good at and what we love to do. It’s up to us to look for those things, and TELL people about them!

First I want to talk about the greatest challenge we face as coaches on social media, then we’ll talk about the 7 things a branding coach will tell you for $150/hour. Next, I'll take you on a journey to Recruiting Bad-Assery and what that’s all about: which is a live case study in action. Then I’ll give you resources to make you recruitment ready.

So what’s the biggest challenge in branding yourself in a sea of sameness? Sometimes it can feel like social media is FILLED with other coaches, so it’s hard to figure out how we’re different. It can be overwhelming and like we have to copy what others do. It’s important to understand that what USED to work DOESN’T anymore. (Posting used to be enough, but now it isn’t.) I was recently with a friend of mine who’s a 4-time Elite 8 star Diamond coach. She said social media used to be so easy- you could post and people could see it. Now, things are changing and what used to be enough simply isn’t anymore. If you’ve been frustrated, take some comfort in the fact that it’s probably not YOU. There is a LOT of noise and things happening out there. We only have people’s attention for about 7 seconds so if we’re not on point and speaking directly to them, we won’t keep their attention! The real intention is to cut through the noise with a message that’s on point.

When I hired this branding coach, I was working full time as a president of a fitness company and putting in a LOT of hours. I had what I’d call an “expensive hobby,” blogging online and helping women. I had a big dream to move home, because I was living a 5 hour flight away from my husband. (We’d been married 14 years and I decided to take a job on the western side of Canada while he lived on the Eastern side.) I had to figure out what I was going to do in a short period of time, and figure out how to get my business going.

These are the “Cracks in the foundation” that my branding coach really saw:

I hadn’t built authentic trust.

People will do business and refer business to people they know, like and trust. This needs to be an intentional part of your strategy. How are you building trust, and sharing who you are? How are people getting to know you? You should have a post every 7 - 9 posts about who you are. At the end of the day, your story tells people why they should trust you.

I hadn’t differentiated myself in a sea of sameness.

“You can’t look at the competition and say you’re going to do it better. You have to look at the competition and say you’re going to do it differently.” - Steve Jobs.
Take your top competition, and have a look at their strengths and weaknesses. What do they do differently? For example: Something I do differently from other social curators out there is first, I integrate myself into a business. When I decided to work with Beachbody, I fully integrated myself into the Beachbody world. (I don’t think you can write a social media post for someone if you want to be intentional and drive their customers to buy something by just “spraying and praying.”) I want to KNOW the company I'm working for and understand their product so I can push that customer along the cycle. Other curators make more generic posts, and don’t work one-on-one with the company.

This is what I would call your “Sweet Spot.” What makes you stand out in that Sea of Sameness? Maybe you haven’t defined this- so just think about it. When I think back to things I did - like taking English literature in school, the writing part felt natural. I have the mind of a creative, and I’m a writer by heart. That’s something that helps me stand out in that sea of sameness. It’s saying, “What’s different about my background that gives me a different perspective?”

I hadn’t aligned my tribe.

It’s about sticking with the people who pull the magic out of you and not the madness. It’s about your values. They’re like a magnet. For me, I’m very simplistic and like things that are simple. I’m not detail oriented. If you want to work with me, it’s going to be step-by-step and not a long multi-point plan. If I attract people who are looking for a 17-step plan, I’m not their girl! If you’ve ever had one of those clients who drive you crazy and you don’t know why… Here's the reason: you have values deep down that are important to you. When you come into contact with someone who doesn’t share the same values, you feel this dissonance because your values aren’t aligned. When you come across someone you’re in total harmony with, you can have a thousand of those clients and everything is easy. That’s why it’s SO important to be aligned with your tribe. (Do you like to work with people who like to check in every day, or does that drive you crazy? Etc!)
It’s important to be clear and vocal about what you stand for, because it’ll attract the people you want to work with. The problem with social media is if you're speaking to everyone, you’re speaking to no one. It’s important to be SPECIFIC, and picture that person you’re talking across the table to.

I hadn’t defined my brand experience.

Ever have that moment where you look at your social media and realize your fonts and color schemes aren’t really what you were picturing? Your brand is a story unfolding across all customer touch points. Everyone has a brand “avatar.” An experience they’re after. if you’re not clear on your archetype, your brand starts to look inconsistent and unintentional. For example, Disney is called “The Hero.” They have an intentional brand experience where “everyone leaves happy.” For example, there’s a feeling people get when they see your Facebook cover page. It’s what you stand for.
Your brand stands for how you want your customer to FEEL when they encounter you. There’s the Hero, the Ruler, the Creative, Girl Next Door.. etc. you can take a quiz online that will tell you where you land, what brand colors and fonts to use, etc.

I didn’t know who I was talking to.

This is all about your ideal customer or coach. Get so close to your customers that you can tell them what they need before they realize it themselves. Who is your ideal customer or coach who can’t get enough of you, and you can’t get enough of them? Get detailed. If you have a team right now, look at your best coach. What are their qualities? (Are they a teacher? A nurse? Etc.) Who are consistently your ideal coaches or customers and what do they all have in common? The more details you can get, the more you can speak directly to that person and call them out on social media. Where do they live? How many kids do they have? What does their husband do? What keeps them up at night? They need to be your “Muse” as you’re recruiting. What’s running through their mind that you can speak to? What do they think about, but don’t say? The guru of this in Beachbody is Ashlie Molstaad. That girl is so successful because she says what women think but don’t say. It’s disruptive and stops your scroll.
Think about yourself 2-3 steps behind where you are now. What held you back from becoming a coach? Weren’t sure there was money in this? Never ran your own business? get really intimate with the dialogue you had with yourself. That’s the kind of specificity I’m talking about here. That's what makes a beautiful, scroll-stopping post on Instagram.

I don’t know which 20% got me 80% of my results.

They say this rule - the Pareto Principle - is behind all successful businesses. This rule applies to any other equation out there. An example would be your customer list. 20% of your customers are bringing in 80% of the revenue in your business. Who are those people? Pay attention to who they are. Know your most valuable resource, and focus more on them. This rule plays out in everything you can think of.

I didn’t have a strategy for answering the deep-rooted challenges my ideal customers were having.

A content strategy is knowing what to talk about. It’s as simple as that. What questions are your ideal customers or coaches asking themselves? Knowing your customer is knowing what keeps them up at night. An example can be this: a lot of coaches are moms. A lot of moms want to stay home with their children instead of returning to work. That would be something you might want to generate content about. If you have a similar story, write about how you were able to transition and stay home with your kids. What does your ideal coach think about that she doesn’t say?

Let’s take a journey down the road of one of the most successful brands of all time. I chose LuluLemon because if you’ve ever looked at their recruiting efforts, they have applications for people to work for them for minimal pay but they have a crazy list of people who want to be part of their company. Their story is on their website. The first store opened in Vancouver in 1998, where they started as a design studio by day and yoga studio by night to pay the rent. They became a standalone store in November in 2000. It was a wild success story brought to life by a man named Chip, whose background was in snowboard apparel. He was an adrenaline junkie and when he tried yoga and meditation, he found he got the same adrenaline rush he got from snowboarding, surfing, etc. They really share their story and talk a lot about their Canadian pride. They share their history, their manifesto, etc. It’s a very authentic, genuine way to pull their story together.
Their sweet spots: Yoga, technical athletic fabrics, and community hub. Surfing, snowboarding and euphoric feelings were what Chip was all about. Ever notice that when you go inside and talk to them, they ask you a lot of questions? They ask your name, what you’ll be using the clothing for, etc? They do everything differently. They put their values on the wall and on their bags, and it makes customers feel very aligned with their brand and experience just by walking in and purchasing something.

When you nail these 7 things, it’s the difference between amateurs and professionals. It took me 7 months and I went from working part time to being able to do this full time and replace my income.