Marc Mawhinney: Be Unapologetically Polarizing With Your Message For Profits and Clients-Ep:146

Hey welcome to she coaches, coaches, I'm your host, Candy MotZek. And I'm going to help you find the clarity, confidence and courage to become the coach that you are meant to be. If you're a new coach, or if you've always wanted to be a life coach, then this is the place for you. We're going to talk all about mindset and strategies and how to, because step by step only works when you have the clarity, courage and confidence to take action. Let's get started. Hey, everyone, and welcome to this week's episode of she coaches coaches, I've got a special guest for you today. His name is Marc Mawhinney. And let me tell you a little bit about Mark. Well, so first off, Mark is one of my coaches. And I always think that it's really great for you, the listener to hear the kinds of people that I work with as well. I like to show you that there are such a range of style of coaches, I think that's important. And then I also think there is something about me demonstrating to you that coaches hire coaches like we continue to need to grow, we need to learn, we need to get mentored, and we need to see our blind spots. And so one of the reasons I invited mark on the show, but also he is just a super guy, so let me tell you about him. Mark is a lifelong entrepreneur who helps coaches get more clients without paid advertising. He achieves this with his coaching programs, his podcast, natural born coaches, his Facebook group, the coaching jungle, and his exclusive secret Coach Club. He's been a speaker at events like Social Media Marketing World, and frequently makes media appearances and contributes to entrepreneur.com. You can learn more about mark in the show notes at Natural Born coaches.com. And also just listen to the episode. And if you're interested in chatting with him, I would highly recommend him. Mark, welcome to the show. Hey, candy,

thanks for having me.

It was super, I was looking forward to this conversation. So

you and I have known each other not super well, but for a couple of months. And one of the things that I really appreciate about working with you is that you are unapologetic about who you are. And I know that that's one of the topics that you'd like to talk about, is this. People pleasing and being yourself and how do you use that to your advantage in your business? Can you share a little bit about that?

Well, you're too humble to admit this, but you forgot to mention that you've made why $2.8 million since we started working together three months ago.

And it's all in my bank account.

That's not all me I think was a team effort. So I'm just getting. Yeah, I mean, maybe it's the older that I get, you know, I'm not a spring chicken anymore. I'm 44. And I tend to care less what people think. I think everyone obviously cares the bed the opinions of others, to a certain extent, but my hide has gotten a little thicker. as the years progress with it. I have to credit I went through a business closure when in my real estate days, boys 14 years ago. And that really did a lot to that when anyone who's gone through a business closure. Mine was a public messy one that changes a little bit definitely toughens you up and changes your opinion that way. So, yeah, that I think that coaches would be much happier if they thought less about what they're worried less about what people thought about them and just put out there their unvarnished opinion, you know, unfiltered, and life short, you know, don't hold back. And it's a lot more fun to do business when you do that as well, when you're unfiltered.

Yeah, reminds me of that, quote, I think it's an Eleanor Roosevelt quote, that says something like now, this isn't the right words, but it's the same idea that we would worry so much less about what people think about us if we realized how rarely they were actually even thinking about us at all.

There's a great story that illustrates us and this happened back to you remember years ago when the politician in New York Anthony Weiner was okay, he went through a big scandal, while at least in the Twitter world, it was a scandal. He sent out a tweet. He was married by the way, and he sent out a tweet of his pictures he shouldn't have there have his private parts. Unfortunately, his name is wiener which doesn't help. And he sent it to me He, he tweeted what was supposed to be a private message, but it went out as a public tweet. And he was supposed to be sending this to a woman who wasn't his wife and a bunch of stuff came out. So it was a really big deal back then, at least people following up politically, you know, I like politics. So I follow that. And I always remember a story that Mel Robbins, who wrote the five second rule and other great stuff, she was writing a column for Success Magazine, and she told the story that she was in New York, right at the height of the Wiener gate, or whatever, this big scandal that seemed like everyone was talking about, and she was getting a cab, and she said, to the cabbie, just you know, to make conversation Gee, what do you think of this whole Anthony wiener thing? Because she thought everybody was talking about it? And he said, Who? And she goes, Oh, Anthony Weiner, you know, or whatever. And he goes, No, no, I don't know who that is. So her point was this cab driver, you know, he has to worry about paying his mortgage. And who knows, maybe his wife is sick, his daughter is dating someone that he doesn't want to date, and God only knows. But people have their own worries. And they're not sitting around the dinner table worrying about you candy, or me or anyone else. You know, they're worried primarily with number one or the people closest to them in their lives. So I always remember the Anthony Weiner story. And that's motivation. Don't don't tweet out private parts. But just remember that story to help with us.

Yeah, or maybe you don't have the last name wiener to begin with. There is that message here as well?

Yeah, money isn't exactly a super sexy last name or anything like that. But I'll take my Winnie over wiener any day.

Yeah, me. Me too.

It's kind of interesting, because I know that you send out a daily newsletter, and that that's one of your solid business strategies that you use. But then you combine it with making sure that you tell real stories. And you tell stories that sometimes have a bit of an edge to it, you know, trying to be polarizing. How did you start doing that? Maybe that's the question. I'm not even sure if I've got the right question. But that seems like the place to go, like, start doing that.

Well, with email marketing, in particular, it ties into this whole topic, because for the first two years that I was doing email when I started my coaching business in 2014, up until spring of 2016 my emails were boring. They were good cure if you had insomnia, open up one of our emails because I wasn't trying to offend you know, you don't want to lose subscribers and you want to be nice and all this other stuff. Plus we're Canadian, you and I so we have added pressure being nice because everyone assumes Canadians are polite and all that but um, I was getting ready to stop doing email because I was doing it like everyone else was sending out oh, maybe an email a week, one every two weeks, maybe two emails in a certain week. It just wasn't consistent. And like I said I had the filter on so they were just designed to not offend and tellingly, the results I got from it were no results or very few sales. So I ended up a Hail Mary changing my email marketing where I said I'm gonna do daily emails, I'm gonna try that for a month and not put pressure on myself. I don't have to make a million dollars from email but I'm gonna do it every single day for 30 days. And so I'm also going to take the filter off and just say what I think you know, crazy concept actually talk right like detox I think and that made a big difference because I started to get more replies more opens eventually more such as sales as well with it and I thought wow, there's something to it. So my emails I'm not going in there. I think some people when they think that'd be polarizing, they go a little too far. It's like course correcting when you're going you hit the rumble strips on the side of the highway and then you turn your wheel all the way over to go to the left, and yeah, like a perfect example of this. I remember back in 2016 I think it was a fall of 2016 Tony Robbins documentary came out on Netflix, I am not your guru. I don't know if you saw that or not but I'm

not a Tony Robbins person so yeah, so talk I watch

it's interesting you know being a coach and stuff but in this documentary I don't know how many F bombs he dropped it was like he was trying to break a record Guinness Book of World Records for how many times he could curse in there and it was really strange as every second word was at this at that anyways, he's Tony Robbins he could do whatever I guess but um, what I noticed in the days and weeks following this documentary coming out was coaches that I'm connected with online who previously didn't curse like sailors were suddenly just dropping out bombs and just going way over the top so there's one coach I know that was in this isn't an exaggeration is like basically saying, you don't go for your effing dreams. You're an effing pile of garbage and get the f out of here. Go get it Half a job, you know, something like that, like just going over the top. And it came across as silly, you know with it. So he was trying to do the whole polarization dropping F bombs, because I will tell you Tony Robbins, it works for him. So, Tony Robbins, I'm gonna start getting ice baths every day or whatever, and I'm gonna curse like a sailor. Well, you know, it's not as simple simplistic as that. So some people go a little overboard with polarizing where you could just tell that they're trying to do it, I think that has to be backed by principle or opinions that you actually hold. So for me, I often would shouldn't be polarizing. But I often talk about my love of capitalism, you know, in supporting capitalism, which is a controversial subject nowadays in these highly charged times, you know, and, but that comes from a principle, I actually believe in that I'm proud capitalist. And I'm not just saying that just to try to be polarizing or whatever. If I was a socialist or communist, then I would put that opinion out there, but I'm not on the opposite. So I think that has to be backed by actual beliefs, and not just made up stuff.

Yeah, and the thing that there's a couple of things here that you said, that I just sort of want to circle back to. One is that it's like, actually, your opinion. And that also, it's okay, like, when you sort of go from writing, we'll call it the boring email. But, you know, a new coach might be posting on Instagram, or they might be doing, you know, a video or something like that. But they might go from posting or sending that boring thing that I was gonna say vanilla, but I like vanilla pablum to over the top polarizing. And then there's a place in the middle, where it really is you. And it's okay to go on to both edges as you come as you evolve to come down to actually finding your voice. So I think that that was really important. And the other thing, I just wanted to comment on your daily emailing, because I don't know how many days you've been emailing for. But I know it's a largest

factory. So it's a little over 2500 Because it was April 2016. And yeah, from where we're recording now. So, yeah, there's a few of them there.

So So and, and it's amazing. And I have to say that I've done sort of fits and spurts of it. And you know, and again, that's one of the reasons I want to say it on the podcast here is I said, Yeah, I'm gonna send an email every day. And I think I did like 45 days. But you know, 45 days is more than one every 10 days randomly without a plan. And so even though it's not, you know, 300 days, it still made 45 days, and then I can start again, and again. And again. There is another piece here is that sending those daily emails really had an impact. I think I, most of my coaching that I do at this moment that we're recording is private one on one coaching. And I think I booked 15 consults, sending out 45 emails, yeah, because it was a combination of making an offer, telling people I had space on my calendar, not just assuming people knew, telling them about a new podcast episode offering something, maybe one of those free lead magnets that I already had sitting in my vault, just creating that conversation. And so this idea of doing something for an extended period of time, as an experiment, can really help can really help a new coach can really help a struggling coach who's sitting in that place where they're kind of like, it's okay. And I really want to kind of inject a spark of life into my business, do something like that, you know, take my suggestion, and just and run with it.

It's really difficult. And you would appreciate this because you come from a corporate background. I find a lot of coaches online entrepreneurs who come from a corporate background have a tough time taking that filter off because they're used to being very conscious of what they're putting down on an email just from their background and they still even if they tried to get away from and have a bit of that corporate voice when they're writing with it. So what I tried to do is I I've had friends of mine who are on my email list who said Mark your emails sound like how you talk in a way from email or off camera or whatever. And I said, Well, yeah, of course how's it gonna sound but I get the point. They're trying to make a lot of people put on the corporate E if that's a word corporate e mask, and they're just afraid to look unprofessional as well. And you know, my emails, I'm not sure dropping F bombs in my emails. And I'm not. When I say I'm not corporate, but I'm also I'm in business. I'm mindful of that, you know, people are looking to hire me. So I'm not going to share certain things in the email, necessarily. But yeah, I think overall, you have to kind of let go and not worry too much about it. I had one client that really helped her this was more for Facebook than email, but it could help is she was holding back a lot. And she was afraid to post on Facebook, about certain things because she had friends, family, people, she went to high school with grade 10, English sat next door, and that was really in our head. So what I had to do was post what you really want to say on Facebook, but you know, you can change the visibility to who sees us. So it can be public, it can be just your Facebook friends, or it can be only you locked right down. So no one else sees it by yourself. And I said, Okay, well, I said, Let's post only post once a day, take the filter off, but set the visibility to only me or only you, however, and she did that. And what happened after about a week or so she ended up setting them all the public because she's like, Yeah, this is silly. She was in that practice of posting and getting more comfortable with it, you know, she got used to the water was cold at first we jump in the pool, but that was getting warmer and shit, I don't know, I'm just gonna post it out there. And this goes back to not everyone's looking at us and judging us and being all critical, they got their own stuff to worry about. And that really helped for her. So if anyone struggling with it, whether it be email, social media, whatever, at least right? What you want to do set the visibility a little different, you'll probably find that pretty soon you'll open it up that everyone can see it anyways.

Yeah, that's a good idea. And you can do that with your emails as well, like when you're a newer coach starting out, probably only have somewhere around maybe 100, maybe 50 people on your email list. And a lot of them you might know from your prior your prior life, your prior, you know, their friends, family, workmates, whatever, but that's okay. You know, you start where you start where you can start. And so there's this. My website is called step into success now. And one of the pieces of it that I that I'm always trying to remind myself and my clients is it's those small, little incremental steps, you know, you take one small step, like you were saying about your client post every day, but set the visibility to just you, and then not try to do everything at once. Everybody has a different tolerance about what that's going to be some people it may have been the challenge that was appropriate may have been, nope, you go post every day, and you make it visible to everyone. But that might have been the, the slightly more comfortable version instead of do a video every day and share it with everybody. So you know, you have to kind of take your own tolerance into into, you know, into consideration when you're doing something like that. Yeah. Sorry. Go ahead. Oh, sorry.

Oh, no, I was just gonna mention in 2023, of course, everyone's talking about open AI and chat, GPT and stuff. And with so many people rushing to rely on that it's going to be in the people that share their personality and be polarizing and not talk like AI or robot will stick out like a sore thumb, because I think we're gonna see a lot of content that sounds or seems the same, because it's people just using chat GPT for everything. And sorry, go ahead.

No, no. And it's actually it's an interesting topic, because I've heard that you can train it to speak in your voice as well. And, you know, I've given a little bit of thought to where this is going to take coaches and a lot. I think there's a lot of coaches that are rightfully scared that their business is going to be impacted negatively with AI, that they'll be replaced by a bot by an app or whatever. But you know, at the heart of it, coaches are about connection, right. And so my opinion is that there's probably a lot of things that many coaches do, that could be replaced by AI. ask the right question and then journal on the right question to you know, find out more about your motivation. But you're never going to be able to create the relationship with that you can with another coach, or with a group program where you're actually creating relationships with like minded people. What do you think what do you think about that mark?

Well, it's like when I was in real estate, the first decade of the new century, so the stone age's 2000 to 2009 we always heard that Oh, real estate agents are going to be phased out because of technology. People can go on the internet, they can get all the details about houses, they can do all this other stuff. And that hasn't happened, although I think they're still pressing They're probably downward pressure on real estate commissions and things like that. But people will probably, there'll be a certain segment of the population that doesn't want to deal with the strangers if they're selling their house, or you want to have an actual real life person, you know, doing it, not just everything handled in there are. So people said that the real estate agents would be gone dead and gone by now, here we are in 2023. And they're not. And I think it's the same thing for coaches, I have the like you, I have several coaches, and I can't wrap my head around, bought, or you know, or an app or some just talking to it. I like dealing with an actual person. And I think it's very difficult to replace what a person brings to the table. So not the crap on chat GPT and stuff, I think that it can be used for good. It's just I caution coaches about relying totally on it thinking, Oh, this is great, I'll never have to create my own content again. I had a coaching friend of mine the other day, it's like, Oh, it's great. It created the coaching program for me. I told it to create this and that, and I'm thinking, wow, that's not how I'd be doing. I wouldn't want it creating a program for me.

I think there's also a good, a good window for the end, you know, like, maybe you use something like that, to create a tool that supports your clients in the off hours. You know, like, for me, most of my clients, we speak just about weekly, for, you know, an extended period of time, we've built up a relationship over time. But dentists go and they live their life for the rest of the week. Right? And so is there a place where there is a great tool that could be you could somehow create it in sort of style of coach, you know, like, there's the no BS kind of coaches. There's the super compassionate, kind and generous coaches. There's the very factual coaches, can you create a bot that could provide interim support for people, you know, to help guide them and use that to supplement and actually improve your overall product, as a coach? Still have that personal content? And then have the other as well?

Exactly. So you can tell the bot right, a polarizing content that will?

That's what you could do.

I have the perfect solution coming up. Next year with the US election is one day you want to put up a pro Biden post, but then you follow it up the next day with pro Trump or whoever has Republican nomination. And then you just alternate one day, it's left wing one day, it's right wing. And then I think your engagement would be crazy high, you probably free up a lot of spots on your Facebook friends list or whatever. There's some free but well, actually, all kidding aside, I had Donald Trump's name and then the email subject line before it was one of the highest open rates of any email that ever sent. And it wasn't pro or anti Trump. It was just something that I noticed I worked it into a business lesson. And because people who absolutely detest Trump, they think he's the Antichrist, they're gonna open it up out of curiosity. People think he's the greatest thing since sliced bread. And he's making America great again, they're gonna open up to and yeah, my open rate was just through the roof that day.

It's interesting, right? But, but we're not done. Not done from a place of integrating it into a business lesson, I think is the key is the key point there. Cool. So Mark, we've talked about all kinds of stuff. Short, 20 minute conversation. What's one, notice maybe one thing that you'd like to leave us with?

Oh, boys, that's always tough because I have so I like talking. Well, here in Canada, they never eat yellow snow. There you go. Okay. Now, I'm just kidding. You know, there's on the topic of polarization, I guess, just to keep with the theme of this one is, you know, this candy is recently I went through my father passed away just less than two weeks ago. And maybe it's me getting older than you're going through where you're losing parents and stuff like that. It's really changed a lot of my outlook on life. I know it's cliche to say life is short. You know, you hear that how many times a day, but it is true. And that's what I would stress. If you're worried about putting out an opinion that might lose some followers or you're not quite sure about or whatever, no one's going to remember. You know, you're gonna be dead and buried down the road and I will everyone will be no one's gonna be worried about what you posted on Facebook or emailed your list on that day in 20 2030. You know, or whatever. So I think that could help take a bit of pressure off because we're not thinking like, Oh, this is something that's going to be around for 1000s of years and future classes and museums, historians are gonna be studying my tweet from 2023. They will, and teaching

coaches how to coach people. Yeah, exactly. So

yeah, don't take yourself so serious when it comes to things. Yeah, I hate canceled culture. And maybe that's where a lot of this comes from, for me is that it's, I think things are starting to shift where I've noticed some interesting situations lately, where people who you thought would have been even a couple years ago, canceled and gone for good, or actually popping their head back out. It seems like there's a little bit more of a forgiving segment of the population that second okay, maybe we went a little too far with the mob with pitchforks and canceled people made a tweet in high school, and now they're, they got to be canceled for the rest of their lives, which is crazy with it. And yeah, so that's all I say is don't put too much pressure on yourself, you know, put your opinion out there, you'll attract the people who resonate with it, you'll drive away the people who don't but that that's a good thing. I would much rather have people in my orbit potential clients customers stuff. They're either a hell yes, or hell no, I don't want ones that are high in the middle or indifferent for me, because that's not good. So I'd rather have it hot and cold, but no lukewarm.

Yeah, I like that. And, and I think that that's important for us to remember when we're posting when we're sending emails is that the purpose of those is to generate business, the purpose is to create conversation and get people interested in maybe I would like to work with that coach, maybe I would like to find out more about how they could help me with my challenge, or helped me reach my goal. And so being a little bit more polarizing, it helps you as the coach, because then you have people that are like, No thanks, this is this doesn't resonate, I'm going to leave, I'm going to unsubscribe from your list. But it also helps that individual, right, it helps them go. That's a definite no for me, or, you know what, there is something about how that individual writes and speaks, I would like to speak with them. And that could actually help them move faster towards what they want. So

it's people, people respect others that are willing to put their opinion out there. And they combat it as long as they can back it up. But they're not afraid and they're putting out there even if they disagree with that opinion. So some of my best clients have been far far left tree hugging types are furnished Columbia. So that's one of my clients in California, we had a laugh about it one day, I didn't even realize, because we don't talk politics, but she took a sip of coffee during her video call. And it was a Bernie Sanders mug. And then she kind of was a little sheepish and went to hide it, we have a good laugh about it. And she goes, I know you're not a Bernie Sanders fan or whatever. But so yeah, it's not like I she disqualified me just based on, you know, my love of capitalism, or I disqualified her because she likes Bernie Sanders. with it. You know, I think people just, they'll, they'll gravitate to you, you don't have to agree with people 100% of the time, you know, world would be pretty boring if that was the case with it. So put your opinions out there boldly, strongly, and you'd be surprised at what can be attracted in your business.

That's wonderful. Thanks, Mark. So for the listeners who are interested, and they want to find out more about you, how do they come more into your world into your community?

Best spot is natural born coaches.com. And there's also the Facebook group, the coaching jungle, so we'd love to have people there, Doc coaching jungle.com.

Lots of people in there, too. It's a great community. Lots of good conversation. Yeah. Okay. Thanks so much for having us or

I'm gonna leave that into.

There you go. And we'll polarize people that are really

joining me that she coaches coaches, everywhere. Yeah, look forward to talking with you all next week. Thanks again for listening today.