The Health Coach Sales Lab

Are You Teaching Too Much?

• Jamie Jones • Episode 5

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Many health coaches struggle with content that gets engagement but doesn't convert to clients because they're teaching too much instead of leading transformation. When we focus solely on delivering information, we accidentally position our audience as passive consumers who appreciate our knowledge intellectually but aren't emotionally compelled to take action.

• Health coaches often turn every post into a lesson packed with tips and information
• Teaching a lot can lead to content that gets likes and saves but doesn't convert to clients
• Teaching is not the same as leading or creating transformation
• Over-teaching removes your audience from the process and answers questions they haven't asked yet
• Humans take action when something resonates emotionally, not just intellectually
• Effective content creates reflection and helps people see themselves clearly
• Shift from teacher to guide by creating content that drives deeper shifts, not just quick wins
• Before posting, ask yourself: "Is this teaching something or helping someone see something new?"
• Balance informational posts with content that models your coaching approach
• Remember you're a health coach, not just a health educator – people can Google information, but they need you for transformation

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Speaker 1:

Hello friends, it's Jamie here and welcome back to the show. This week we're going to be talking about how to stop teaching so much in our content and why it's important. So this is something I see a lot of the times with health coaches that I work with. If we haven't met yet, I've been a health coach for 13 years and I've also been working with health coaches for that long, developing curriculum and content and programs that they then use with their clients. So I've been in this field a long time and worked with a lot of health coaches and I see this over and over and over. So I see coaches, you know, who have the best of intentions. They want to serve, they want to be useful, they want to help people start making changes, even if they never end up working together. So what they do is they teach, and they teach a lot. They can turn every post into a lesson. They try to squeeze their knowledge into digestible takeaways. They put together carousels and master classes and tips people can try right now and on paper it all looks right, it all looks great, it looks helpful and useful and wonderful.

Speaker 1:

But what happens and maybe this happens to you as you teach? You put something that feels clear and thoughtful and valuable out there, and then it it's crickets. You might have a couple of likes, you might have a couple of saves and maybe even a couple of DMs that say this is so helpful, thank you so much. But you don't have any clients and you don't have any momentum. You're not getting conversions on that content. So you start to question things. You wonder if you need a new offer or a new niche or a new strategy or a new something. But before you throw everything out and start over, I really want to offer a possibility. And that possibility could be what? If the reason your content isn't converting is because you're teaching too much and I don't know if you've thought about that before, and I know it can feel backwards, like isn't value the whole point? Aren't we supposed to be helpful? And yes, all of that's true, but I really want you to hear that teaching is not the same as leading and it's also not the same as transformation. And when your content teaches too much, and if you're the one talking, talking, talking and they're just Getting information from you, it does something often that you don't intend to do, of course, but it removes your audience from the process. It answers questions they haven't even asked yet. It satisfies their curiosity without moving their decision-making forward.

Speaker 1:

And I think we live in a culture of, you know, consuming things, consuming content all day, every day, and we do that a lot with social media and with TV and with you know everything in our modern life. But that doesn't change anything. It's just we're consuming but we aren't doing anything. We're not moving anything forward. And the thing about humans in general is that we don't take action just because we understand something intellectually. We take action when something resonates emotionally, when we really feel like someone gets us, when we recognize ourselves in a post and suddenly think, oh, you know, that's what's been happening, that's why, whatever and that moment doesn't come from a list of tips, you know. It can come from insight. It can come from pulling on those emotional strings and really seeing yourself in someone else, and that requires talking about things more deeply than just a list of tips, right?

Speaker 1:

So if your content is packed with teaching right now and you are wondering why it's not leading to clients, then I really want you to consider that maybe you're doing too much of the thinking for your audience. You're solving problems that they don't even maybe fully know they have, yet and you're jumping straight to here's how to fix it before they've even said you know, I think something's wrong or I think maybe I need to work on this. And it's not that your ideas are off, that's not it at all. It's that they're just arriving too soon and we're just jumping the gun a little bit and your people just aren't quite ready for the how yet they're still stuck in the why, and that could be the why they feel off, the why nothing's working, the why they keep getting derailed even though they're trying so hard, and that can mean they don't need a protocol, they need reflection and they need to think about this more. They need you to name the things that they've been carrying that they haven't said out loud yet. We need to help them go internally and figure these thoughts out and these patterns out for themselves. And they need to feel seen before they're willing to move, you know, before they are willing to make a move towards a transformation. And when you skip that step, when you teach too soon or too much or too often, you are accidentally making them passive, like they're passively just consuming your content and they read your content and they think you know that makes sense, but then they don't do anything with it.

Speaker 1:

Because, again, I want to say that content does not mean transformation and teaching does not mean transformation. Because so what do we do? What do we do with this? Right, we need to shift from teacher to guide, and that means we stop creating content that delivers a quick win and you start creating content that creates a deeper shift. And you know, you write in a way that feels like she's not just giving me advice, she's walking me through something I did not even realize I needed to understand, and that's what positions you as a coach that they trust, because you have helped unlock things in them that they haven't been able to do themselves, and that is the beautiful transformational work of a coach.

Speaker 1:

So here's what I want you to try. I want you, before you post your next piece of content, I want you to pause and ask yourself is this post trying to teach something, or is it helping someone see something they haven't seen before? And that doesn't mean never post anything that is a list of tips or anything like that. Honestly, I think that those are great as Instagram posts or social media posts that stay on your feed, but I think that you need to layer those in with the posts that I'm talking about, the ones that are more willing to pull back and help them see things inside themselves. You know the work that a coach does, so we really need to be having both of those so that it's not just all teaching and no transformation. And we'll talk about more of these things in the future in different ways that you can layer those posts and where those posts are best on your feed. You know, are they stories or are they carousel posts or are they? Where is that, you know? So we'll talk about that more.

Speaker 1:

And so I just really want you to hear me say that doesn't mean don't post these informational things, these helpful tips and tricks and all of that. There is definitely a place for that, but I want to make sure that that's not all you're posting, if that makes sense. So I don't want you to hold back on the value. I just want you to also consider what transformation you're providing and if you're going deeper than that and really helping. You know, hold up a mirror to people and see what they need in themselves and what transformation they can do next, and sometimes that all it is. That is all it is. It is helping them realize what's not working and then opening the door to something new, and that's what moves people toward you, because you help them see themselves more clearly than they have before. And that is what changes a post from oh. That's what moves people toward you, because you help them see themselves more clearly than they have before, and that is what changes a post from oh, that's interesting to oh, I really need to work with her because she is pulling this stuff out of me that I can't do on my own, and you don't get there by over explaining or, you know, not going deeper in that way.

Speaker 1:

So I just really want you to step into that willing to lead place, and that's where I want you to bring something up that gets overlooked a lot, and that is that you're a health coach, not a health educator, not a lecturer, not a curriculum developer. And education is a part of coaching, for sure, because people need to learn these things. But when your content is veering too far into the teaching mode, it starts to move you out of your role as a health coach, and I really want you to think about that. You know your clients don't come to you just for information. They could Google that, they could chat GPT, that, especially these days, a lot of people are doing that. So, but chat GPT cannot do everything, you know. They cannot be a human, they cannot be you.

Speaker 1:

So I want you just to focus on being a coach more than a teacher, and you know when your content becomes an ongoing lesson plan.

Speaker 1:

You're not modeling what it's like to be coached by you. You're just showing them that you know things, which is so great, truly like you need. You need to know these things to do your job, but that's not what positions you as the coach, and so coaching is about reflection. It's not just information, and that is the lesson that I want you to take today and think about more and see if that's something that you're doing, perhaps, and how we can shift that a little bit. So if you have any questions or you you know this has jogged some thoughts for you I would love to talk more about it with you. You can hop into our Facebook group the link is in the show notes here and just start a conversation about it. I would love to hear your thoughts and what is going through your mind and what you might need some help with and all those things. So let's start chatting about it. Hop in the group and I will see you there, and I will also see you next week.