Of all the things we need to learn how to master as a coach or consultant is expectation management.  It is more important than your niche, your offers, your marketing, price point, packaging our expertise or what social media platforms to spend our time on.   You can’t fully rely on your potential client to know what they expect from hiring you, either.  You have to get ahead of the conversation by asking questions that reveal their unconscious beliefs and desires because those are the ones they will judge you by. 

Something I have come to understand is how often clients are looking for a Magic Pill and have zero self awareness that this is even the case.  A Magic Pill is the belief that there will be a perfect solution to whatever we are struggling with, and they just keep trying different things until they find it.   Sometimes we unwittingly participate in this search for a Magic Pill by the way we market our services and sell our programs by over stating the benefits. 

Change is hard and requires that we change our beliefs and our identity, not just our behavior.  We all want solutions that are easy, fast and effortless, but meaningful and lasting change almost never is.   In this no-BS solo episode, we are going to dismantle the myth of the Magic Pill, so we can offer our potential clients genuine value, and no-BS offers, not hype. 

Highlights of this episode:

• What is a Magic Pill and why are so many of us looking for one? 
• How coaches and consultants are selling Magic Pills without realizing it 
• What we can learn from the weight loss industry about human nature 
• Alternatives to Magic Pill thinking 
• Being in the right room & leaving when it’s time to move on
• Watching for opportunities to be an early adopter
• Being willing to experiment and fail 
• Being willing to tolerate discomfort 
• Recognize what people really want: guidance, support & accountability 

Even if you aren’t desperately seeking magic pills, you may have habits in your business that cost you income, profit, and success.  I created a quiz with 6 different behaviors I often see in female solopreneurs that hold them back. Here’s your invitation to take the quiz, and get specific feedback, guidance, and practical advice about your particular challenge and more importantly, steps you can take to fix it.   

Click on this link to take the quiz: What’s Holding You Back?   https://bit.ly/obstaclesquiz

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Hate Facebook?  Let’s connect on Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/coachdiannwingert/  or 

Linked In: https://www.linkedin.com/in/diannwingertcoaching/

So, that’s all for now, Driven Woman!  Please join us next week for another amazing guest interview with Neena Perez.  We talk about what we both learned from a challenging childhood that has made us who we are, two No-BS business coaches.  I hope you’ll join us for a very fun and inspiring conversation. 

In the meantime, stay driven!  

Well, hey, hey, and welcome back driven woman entrepreneur. You know, a couple of years ago I was working with one of my favorite clients who said, you know, Diann, the longer I've been working with you, the more I've come to realize there really is no magic pill is there. Now, I was not familiar with the expression magic pill at the time, but boy have I become familiar with it since then. Because I think it's one reasons so many people become disillusioned when they go into their own business, especially if it's an online business. So I wanna dig into this topic, pull it all apart, get up into the shizz and break it down for you so that you know what's wrong if you are looking for a magic pill, and more importantly, what you could be doing instead.

Well, what is a magic pill? First and foremost, you may not call it this, you may call it by a different expression, and I'm sure there are probably many of them. What this client was referring to was this notion that if I just find the right coach, the right consultant, the right program, the right guru, the right mentor, the right leader, the person who will guide me, teach me, lead me, who will literally show me whatever it is that I'm unable to see on my own and simply by being around this person, all of the struggles I've been having, poof, disappear. Well, I'm certainly not a magic pill if that's what you're looking for and if you're thinking that there's anybody out there, a guru, a celebrity entrepreneur, a big name, whomever, course creator, consultant, author, podcaster, if you think there is somebody out there, you just have to find and once you do, they will change your life. You are in for a great big disappointment.

In fact, let's upgrade that from disappointment to disillusionment and the truth is, most people who are looking for a magic pill don't even know it. But if you find yourself going from one coach to another, from one consultant to another, if you find yourself taking one course after another, or even signing up for one program after another, if you find yourself thinking, well, maybe. Since I haven't really made progress with all of these different coaches or coaching programs, maybe what I actually need as a consultant, or maybe what I need is a hybrid program where you get both coaching and consulting. I mean, for example, my own program, the Boss Up System does combine business strategy, business coaching, business mentorship and consulting so there are people who are attracted to me because they think I'm their magic pill.

Now, I do a very thorough job of screening people before I issue them an invitation to work with me, because I don't wanna be anybody's magic pill. I don't want anybody to think I'm their magic pill, hope I'm their magic pill, or hire me because they expect me to be their magic pill. Now, it may be that you are not looking for that perfect person. You may be looking for the perfect platform and by platform, I mean should I start a podcast? Should I start a YouTube channel? Should I write a blog? The kinds of questions that you can see a million miles away in any Facebook group that caters to people starting an online business. Total strangers will ask other total strangers, should I start a podcast? How the hell should they know, for real? How should a total stranger know what any other total stranger should or shouldn't do about anything business or life?

It's deeply troubling to me how many well meaning people are looking for answers in all the wrong places, and Facebook groups are one of them. I mean, people asking what niche is best or what content platform is best, what social media should I use to grow my business? I hear there's a lot going on on TikTok, should I start a TikTok channel? Is it too late to get into Twitter, are Facebook groups dead? Hey, I hear LinkedIns having to come back should I double down on my LinkedIn and if I decide to build my audience on Instagram, should I do feed post, stories reels, carousels, infographics, quote posts? Should I do video or is it okay if I just do static posts? Any of these things can be okay, darling, any, any of them. What makes me sad and just a little bit salty is not only that there are so many people asking these kinds of questions, but there are so many wannabe gurus who are all too happy to answer them. Literally every single week, I cannot tell you how many emails I get from people pitching me to be on the podcast, how many DMs I get on literally every single platform because they see that the word coach is part of my title, and they of course want to help me get more coaching clients or they want to share their simple three step system to getting dream clients on repeat, or they are wanna know if I'm interested in scaling from six to seven figures because they just so happen to know how to do that.

Now this whole mystery of why people are looking for magic pills and why people are offering them could completely be solved if we think about another industry that is extremely profitable, where this very same thing has been going on for decades, I'm talking about weight loss. I could also be talking about beauty or anti-aging, but I think the one probably most of us are most familiar with is weight loss. There have probably been thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands of different weight loss programs offered everything from not eating at all. It's called fasting, but if you say don't eat, nobody's gonna pay you for that. But if you say, I have a special system for fasting, and you'll lose weight, yeah, I'll bet you lose weight you're not eating, but you kinda have to sex it up a little bit.

Anyway, people are always looking for ways to lose because maintaining a healthy, optimal weight is hard, especially if you wanna try to do it for many years, if not a lifetime. It's hard, it's hard for so many reasons but this isn't a weight loss podcast, so I'm not gonna talk about why that is. But suffice to say there are probably billions, but at least many, many millions of people at any given time who were looking for a magic pill for weight loss. There actually was a magic pill a number of years ago. It was two pills, actually, Fen and Phen, I don't know actual names, but they were marketed as Fen and Phen, and I think this might have been in the nineties, but Fen-Phen actually worked. You could actually take these magic pills, it was kind of like Jack and the Beanstalk. They got the magic beans, but in this case, you just swallowed. They were literally magic pills because everybody who took them lost their appetite.

I took it for a short time myself, I was trying to lose some post baby weight and I remember going to Pollo Loco for anybody who's not familiar. I really liked their special way of creating chicken or cooking chicken, and I wanted to test myself to see if this shit really worked. So I took the magic pills, I went to Pollo Loco, it was lunchtime and I should have been hungry let's put it that way. I stood in line, I could smell the aromas, normally my mouth would've been watering by then, I literally felt no desire. Now, that was some magic cuz I can always throw down for some chicken. I had zero desire for chicken, or frankly for any other food, it really was magic. Now, within a few months, the reports of serious adverse reactions started coming up. I mean, people died, which is highly problematic when you're trying to show weight loss stuff, but for as long as it lasted, those magic pills had plenty of buyers, including me, and I consider myself a pretty intelligent consumer.

But the desire for weight loss to be easy and effortless is so powerful for so many people, there will always be other people making bababa billions of dollars on weight loss products, programs and services, that industry is never going anywhere. It is far too lucrative and we can't just blame the people selling these products. Like, I don't know if the guys who were selling the Fen-Phen pills got locked up or lost their licenses or got a slap on the wrist or just had to close their company, I don't know what happened to them. And this isn't a legal show or a true crime show or any other kind of show, so I'm not gonna look into that. If that's your thing, be my guest, look it up, and then maybe send me a DM but we can't just make villains out of the people who are selling those answers.

I do not want to make a villain out of the countless coaches, consultants, marketing gurus and self anointed, self appointed celebrity entrepreneurs who tell you they know the way it is a simple step by step system. They've got the insider secrets. They can show you the back door. They will get you to the front of the line. All you have to do is buy in, invest right? We can't just make these people villains because the reason why they are out there, the reason why some of them are making serious bank, including a couple that I have personally contributed to their wealth account they're doing it because there's a market. They're able to make their multi multimillions because there are so many of us who deeply, completely, and almost like religion, believe in magic pills.

Magic pills are just an expression for our deeply held desire to have things we really, really want or think we do, and for them to come easily, quickly, preferably cheaply and with a guarantee. If you think about all the things you've ever bought or even signed up for for free, didn't they hook you with words like fast, easy, simple, effortless, guaranteed, make money in your sleep, something something made easy, passive income, dream clients. Marketing so simple you could do it with half your brain, tied behind your back, and the other taking a nap. Copywriters know exactly what buttons to push, and by the way, I'm not throwing any shade on copywriters. I have a few I follow and I think they're fucking brilliant. In fact, there's a part of me who wishes I had been a copywriter because I do so love me some good wordplay, but these products, services, programs exist because we all want a magic pill, right?

I mean, why do people get plastic surgery, because they wanna look prettier than they were meant to be. Why do we buy things like Fen-Phen? You gotta know on some level something that takes your appetite away might be dangerous, or Botox, which I did in the past, I don't do anymore, but it's a normal human desire to want something you don't have and to want the acquisition to be easy, simple, guaranteed, fun and of course legal. Well, some people don't care so much about that, but we're talking about coaches and consultants and online marketers. You know, I think it wouldn't be so easy to convince so many people that you have the answers to their problems if it were not for the fact that every single marketing book podcast, YouTube channel and coaching program tells you, poke their pain points, that's how we market.

We're supposed to poke 'em where it hurts, not to the point where people are being traumatized, although some don't give a shit one way or the other. They'll traumatize you if they can make a buck, but most people just wanna stir the pot so that you're not in denial about the fact that you're in pain and then they want to sell you on the fact that they have the solution to that pain, that's a magic pill. Now, I wanna be very clear, I am not anti-marketing. I am not anti coaching programs obviously, I am not anti-social media. I'm not anti copywriting. I'm not against any of these things, I use and teach many of them. My point is, in order to be ethical, in order to have a business that has integrity, to be a business owner who operates with integrity we have to understand what's behind people's desire to buy from us to begin with. This belief and a magic pill, whatever they may call it.

Some people will just call it a shortcut, they'll call it a simple solution. They'll call it a quick path., taking cuts in line or insider secrets, and there's nothing inherently wrong with any of these things, but if you find yourself constantly searching and susceptible to sales tactics, whether they're telling you, you need to go on this retreat, this is the place where you're gonna connect with the people that will literally skyrocket your business to a whole other stratosphere, or this is the mastermind that is going to give you access to the highest level thinkers in your industry, could that be a magic pill for you? Could your endless search for the perfect niche, the target market, the ideal client, the irresistible offer? If you find yourself constantly reworking your business model should I do one to one or should I do group or maybe a hybrid? Should I offer VIP days? Should I do high touch, high value or low cost high volume? Could I get there faster if I throw some money, it adds. There's nothing inherently wrong with any of these questions, but this, most of them rely on you believing in a magic pill.

It's why I record episodes like this one saying there is no magic pill friends and the reason why is I don't wanna be a Debbie Downer. I don't wanna pull the proverbial rug out from under people. I don't wanna hurt people's feelings. I don't wanna piss people off. I definitely do not want to disappoint or disillusion anyone, but I think a lot of people that I've seen who've gone to work for themselves, who've attempted to start a business, did not have the slightest idea that they were looking for a magic pill, no idea, and did not realize that it was their desire to find a magic that literally cost them thousands, in some cases, multiple thousands of dollars and years of useless effort. Well, maybe not totally useless, but I've seen many people literally go out of business or give up because they think they can't do it. They think they're doing something wrong. The only thing they did wrong, if it is wrong, is just misguided, is look for a magic pill and to keep on spending money, time, focus, effort, energy, and attention in search of which makes us very vulnerable and easily exploited by the countless people who are all too happy to pretend to be a pharmacist and show us their magic pills.

I don't blame either side, but as a former psychotherapist, I have a little bit more understanding and insight into human nature than most other business strategists. And because I see this and I recognize how damaging it is, I just had to say something. Now, I wanna take a quick little break for this to kind of settle in a little bit and for you to maybe think, have I looked for a magic pill? Have I been looking for a magic pill? Am I still looking for a magic pill? Throw open your proverbial medicine cabinet in your mind and think about all the people and products and programs that you've purchased, hoping and believing, trusting even that that was going to be your ticket. We're gonna be right back and I wanna share with you what you actually could do instead.

Okay, so I know that was kind of heavy, but hey, you know what you're dealing with here. Here's the reality, there is no magic pill. I think I've made that point. Anything you decide to do, whether that's coaching, consulting, courses, hybrid, any of them can work. A podcast can work, YouTube channel can work. A blog can work. They can work. They have worked. They still work. Any social media platform can work even now. Yes, people will tell you they are saturated and they are compared to the past. But new people are coming into the online world every single day, and others are leaving. There is room for you. There always have been, and there always will be.

You can do low cost, high volume, you can do high ticket, low volume. They both work. You can niche down to a very, very tightly defined and described group of people. Or you can kick the whole idea of nicheing to the curb and define your audience. You can do VIP days, you can do retreats, you can do masterminds, they all work. Now, these are the things that you can actually build a business. We're not talking tips and tricks and tools and tactics. We're not even talking strategy. We are definitely not talking a simple step by step system or passive income or anything made easy. Being in the right room does matter, it matters. What I mean by that is not that you should buy to the $25,000 Mastermind when you're only making 50,000 a year. That would not be a wise decision. There are plenty of people in my position who will tell you that you have to double down, go all in and invest based on your future self. That is a quick path to bankruptcy for most people, and it is absolutely a magic pill.

So what does being in the right room look like? It means if you have surrounded yourself with other business owners who are at your same level or less, meaning nobody in your circles is more advanced than you are either in years in business, income level, profit level, or simply what they've been able to achieve in business, then by all means, don't abandon your homies, but you need to gain access to other rooms. We need to surround ourselves, at least some of the people have to be at a higher level than we are, and sometimes you do have to pay for that. But do not make the mistake of thinking all you have to do is pay for because I have seen people spend very large sums of money for access. There are people that ask you to invest $10,000 to be a guest for 30 minutes on their podcast. Unless you are extremely wealthy, that's never a good idea.

There are people who ask you to invest 20,000, 50,000, a hundred thousand to be part of an exclusive group. If you can beg, borrow, or steal that money, you probably still won't truly benefit from being in that room because the amount of money that the other people who are there spent to be there is not the only advantage they have. What I'm suggesting is that in order to constantly grow and not just grow in terms of your income, but in terms of your impact and confidence as an entrepreneur, you need to be continuously upleveling the rooms that you're in. Here's another thing that is extremely helpful and most of us don't do because it requires a healthy risk tolerance.

Every quarter I meet with my financial advisor, Dan. I've worked with him for many years and I actually had his daughter Kelly as a guest on the podcast. Dan knows that I am moderate, conservative, meaning I don't put my money in between the mattress, but I'm not playing the market either. So I have moderate profile, which means I want growth and I'm willing to tolerate some risk. I am not extremely risk averse, nor am I extremely friendly with risk when it comes to my hard earned money, I'm somewhere in the between. You may be somewhere in the middle when it comes to investing for your business. If you're not investing money, you're investing time. In my experience, the people who go places in business do both. But when you think, well, if I invest 5, 10, 20, 50 grand, whatever the going price is to be part of this exclusive group, that's my ticket. No darling, that thought is your magic pill.

So be in the room constantly. Be in better rooms, bigger rooms, different rooms. Challenge yourself to be around other people who are more experienced than you, and frankly might intimidate you a little bit because nothing's cozier, than hanging out with a bunch of people who are at your level giving each other. It feels very nice, but you won't see anyone in the group suddenly take a quantum leap in their business. Everyone in the group will progress at about the same rate because that's how groups work. Okay, be an early adopter. That's another suggestion. When you see a new platform, when you see a new strategy, when you see something that it seems like not very many people are doing, and it is wildly attractive to you and it fits with your existing business model. Business goals, by all means, jump in. Don't buy the farm for God's sake, but go in, don't maybe, maybe you don't wanna sign up for the year long plan. Do the month to month, but be an early adopter.

I have seen people who adopted things early who were frankly mediocre, like absolutely freaking average. There was nothing special about them, but they had the advantage of being first and everyone who came after them had to look up to them in a way. Now just being first, you also have to combine that with continuing to learn and grow. Just being first and not doing anything with it isn't gonna be worth anything, but be an early adopter, even though that means. You will try and fail at a lot of things. I mean, do you remember Clubhouse? I never did understand Clubhouse, by the way, but there are people that were early adopters of Clubhouse. They were all over Clubhouse. They were totally obsessed with Clubhouse, and of course they were telling everybody that they needed to be in Clubhouse. I mean, five minutes after anybody ever even heard of Clubhouse.

The early adopters jumped in, they were selling courses to other people on how to optimize Clubhouse. Now it's been like a couple years, I don't even know if Clubhouse exists anymore. I certainly don't hear anybody talking about it. So does it mean if you are an early adopter, you get into something early, it might go belly up in a year or two? Yeah, of course everybody knows that, but it's still an advantage to be there first. Be there first. Pay attention. If it feels like it's not doing what you expected it to do, then you adjust your involvement accordingly. No one's ever going to hold it against you if you spotted something you thought was going to be popping and you jumped in on it and you splashed around and you got really involved and it didn't live up to yours or anyone else's expectations, so you moved on. That's what most successful entrepreneurs do.

You gotta try in order to know what's going to work, and you have to be willing to have a little egg on your face because most things don't work. The opposite of searching for a magic pill is being alert, awake, aware, willing to take risks, willing to jump into something before everybody else is doing it, and always being willing to leave if it doesn't live up to your expectations. I may have said this, in fact, I know I said it on an earlier episode. I think the most important skill we need to develop as entrepreneurs is our ability to get more comfortable with fear and to change our relationship with failure. The only reason why we are looking for a magic pill, well, maybe not the only reason. Let me take that one of the top reasons why we look for magic pills is that we don't want to experience discomfort. A magic pill is kind of like a guarantee, if I just buy this pill, take this pill, participate in this thing, it's gonna work. So I won't have to feel stupid. I won't have to feel uncomfortable. I won't have to feel anxious. I won't have to feel afraid and it'll work out because that's the program promise, right?

Like it's not me taking responsibility, they're taking responsibility. I'm just buying their pill. Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. Let's go back to the earlier premise. There is no magic. What there is is a willingness to be uncomfortable, a willingness to keep moving to rooms that challenge you, even though that might be a little intimidating, being willing to be an early adopter and being willing to cut your losses when something doesn't look like it's living up to what you expected. Everything else is a magic pill. Now I know that this is controversial, I know that this is probably ruffled a few feathers, and maybe even cause some people to wanna yell back in their earbuds right now, which you can't really do cuz you don't have a microphone but I'm serious.

I really am because my goal, my mission, is to actually help people who want to have their own solopreneur business as a coach, consultant, creative or independent professional, be successful. Successful to me does not mean overnight sensation. It means you are making income and impact that you are sustainable over time. You are doing good work that you feel proud of in your zone of genius, and that you can continue to do it for as long as you want. Maybe a little old fashioned, maybe not too sexy, but if we can just hold off on so many magic pills that tried and true still work, people still buy from coaches, consultants, creatives, and independent professionals for the same reasons.

They like you, they trust you, they resonate with your values. Referrals still work and ultimately the people who buy the kind of services that you and I sell are looking for guidance, support, and accountability, that has never changed. They want connection and they want a sense of belonging. Now, those things may not be flashy. They may not be sexy. They may not get all the copywriters all excited and ready to start tapping their keyboards, but human beings are pretty predictable in that respect. If we're gonna hire someone to help us, we need to feel like we know who they are, like who they are, trust who they and have a sense of belonging and connection from the work we do with them. Whether that's a program, a course, one on one group, that part doesn't matter so much. So instead of looking for magic pills and providing magic pills to others, we can do really, really meaningful, fulfilling high value work by looking to what human beings have always wanted, guidance, support, and accountability with a sense of connection and belonging.

So if you are looking for that in your business, and you are specifically interested in somebody who has made it their purpose to help female solo printers get out of their own way, eliminate the beliefs and behaviors that hold them back and create a business that is both simple and sustainable around their zone of genius. Then we should probably talk. If you're not ready for that, I hope you're on my email list. There is a link in the show notes and it all starts with a quiz, What's holding you back? I will be back next week with another amazing guest interview. Thank you for staying all the way to the end, I hope it was valuable.