I know that what I do and sell as a coach is absolutely priceless.

It has changed my life in a gazillion ways, and it helped many people I worked with dramatically and very positively.

Now that is all really helpful and cool, but it’s not an argument.

While talking to a lot of people over the years, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s impossible to ‘explain’ the results of transformative coaching.

I can chat about it, describe it, sketch it out, paint a picture, put it into a cool story, but in all those cases it’s still mostly a bunch of words.

I can talk about freedom and happiness and joy and creativity as much as I want, but it’s extremely difficult for most people to get a feel for what that actually means for their future, in a practical sense.

People are used to things they can understand, things that make sense on an intellectual level.

That’s why most of us love programs with homework and exercises and daily chores so much: they smell like hard work and logic, and that’s how we’ve learned many skills in our life.

So this mainstream idea about change and progress, this starting point of simply understanding and doing things, is what I often encounter while talking to a potential client.

It’s like they have been chopping trees all of their lives using a pebble.

It kinda works if you keep going at it long enough, because if you keep hammering the tree for hours and hours and hours, it will eventually fall.

And if you don’t know that there are other, way more efficient ways to get the same result, you don’t even consider those alternatives.

You keep using the pebble.

One tiny chop after the other.

You only know the pebble-way of doing things.

And if one day, somebody comes along showing you a big-ass chainsaw while promising that it will work WAAAAY faster, it probably won’t do much for you.

At best you think that a chainsaw is bigger and heavier than a pebble, so smashing it into the tree will probably cause a bigger dent.

But to pay all this money for a thing that is just bigger and heavier doesn’t make sense!

You’d rather keep using the method you know, or pay for a less expensive coach or course or book promising you a bigger pebble, eventually.

This discrepancy between what people are used to and what you can ultimately offer them, something that is way beyond what they can comprehend at present, can be very frustrating.

But the solution is not very complicated.

The thing is: you don’t have to rely on words only, hoping that they somehow get what you are actually trying to convey.

You can show them the chainsaw in action.

That is what a good initial conversation looks and feels like.

You don’t just talk about how your thing will bring down the tree way quicker and easier and with less blood on their hands; you let your prospect experience the whole chopping deal.

You let them feel what it’s like to hold the chainsaw and cut through the tree.

Now there’s a good argument for hiring you.

—

(Photo by @michaelfenton, for Unsplash)