In this post, I want to show you the biggest marketing mistakes that I see coaches and consultants make when it comes to selling out their retreat, inspired by This is Marketing by Seth Godin. If you're trying to grow a coaching or consulting business right now, This is Marketing by Seth Godin is regarded as one of the top marketing books of all time. There are some really big lessons because marketing is all around us. When I was reading this book, I was reading it through the lens of retreats and live events. So the insights I'm going to share with you in this video are inspired by Seth Godin, and this is marketing, through the lens of hosting your own profitable retreat. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to relate this book to live events and also share with you the biggest mistakes I see with coaches and consultants who are trying to market their live events to generate clients for their high-ticket program.
Thinking your retreat is for everyone
First big mistake is that your retreat is for everyone. Seth Godin says, Stop making average things for average people. You have to understand that the market that you will attract your best clients, the top clients, cannot see your retreat, cannot see your event as something that is positioned for everyone. By default, when you try to market to everybody, you speak to nobody. It's like when you're among a group of people and someone says, Hey, and no one looks back because Hey is not a specific person. Hey, is everyone? Whereas if they said, Hey, Curran, I would turn around. That is the difference of mass marketing and being targeted, meaning laser-specific on who you're trying to serve. And mass marketing does not work in coaching or consulting, and it definitely doesn't work in the world of live events and retreats. If you're trying to get someone to transform, meaning help them get from point A to point B, and they're about to pay you thousands of dollars to come to your retreat, to your live event, your This event cannot be for everyone. It cannot be for the masses. And there's a beautiful thing Seth talks about here.
He shares this story of the lock and the key. It's so beautiful. He says, It doesn't make any sense to make a key and then run around looking for a lock to open. The only productive solution is to find a lock and then fashion a key. So a lot of coaches and consultants, when it comes to their live events, they're trying to make a key, they're trying to make an event, and then they go looking for people who might be interested in that event. Whereas the best clients that I've had or the best success stories that I've seen is you work backwards. You first find your clients, you find their pain points, you find what's keeping them up at night for your target market, and then you create your key, a. K. A. Your retreat to open the lock, meaning helping them get transformed, helping them walk through the door. If you're making average things for average people, well, you can only charge average prices. That's when customers customers begin to commoditise you. They begin to think you as a coach or consultant are offering the exact same thing as the consultant down the street when you know your stuff is way better.
So you cannot position your retreat as a commodity. It's not a commodity product. The biggest thing you have to understand when it comes to marketing your live event is that you are marketing a transformation. You are marketing a change. And that's what Seth talks about in his book. He says marketing is the act of making change happen. What change? The change that your clients, the change that your prospects are already seeking to make, you are a facilitator of that change. Help clients become who they want to become, and that's how you need to position your retreat.
Who's is it for? What's it for?
The next thing that can help you market your event and sell out your retreat is being able to answer two very fundamental question. Question number one, who's it for? Question number two, what's it for? These are the two guiding questions. These are your North Star. This is if you get lost answering these questions can point you in the right direction. Who's it for and what's it for? When somebody comes on your retreat landing page, when somebody you're talking to in a sales conversation or you're DMing someone about your event, You need to be able to answer the questions, who's it for? Aka, who is that one person in a crowded marketplace that would benefit, not even benefit, but be transformed by your event? And what's it for? Meaning what is the outcome? I see so many retreat websites and people marketing their events, and they're marketing to feelings of like, you'll leave happier, or you'll leave more fulfilled, or you'll have your sales system dialed in. And all of these emotional words which are important, but they're intangible. What is happiness? What is, you will leave my event feeling happier? Those people fail to answer the question, what's it for? What's it for is this concept of we don't care about your product. We care about what it could do for me. For example, you don't care about this video. You care about what this video could do for you in your business, aka help you make more money. People don't care about my retreats. People don't care about my events. People don't care about my coaching program. They care about what that stuff can do for them. When in doubt, you have to be able to answer this question, which is, what is everyone's favorite radio station? WIIFM. What's in it for me?
When you position your retreat publicly through through conversations, sales calls, DMs, through your website, your landing page, however you're marketing, your email list, however you're marketing your retreat, you have to be able to answer the question, who's it for? Meaning hyper clear on who this event is for and what's it for? Meaning what is the outcome? What is the objective? How is this person going to leave transformed? And think about it like this as a visual. You want to walk in one way, you want to walk out another way. You want to walk in feeling sluggish, demotivated. You want to walk out feeling inspired and rejuvenated. You want to walk in not having a marketing strategy. You want to walk out with a 28-day client-generating system that you feel good about. Walking in, walking out. The fitness industry does this really well with their before and after transformations, but you need to be able to market a before and after transformation on your retreat website as well.
Importance of this idea of a transformational event
The third thing, and I want to re-hammer this point home, is the importance of this idea of a transformational event. Nobody goes to an event just to get more information. They want what that information will allow them to do. That's why you go to events. That's why you hire coaches. That's why you hire mentors. That's why you fly around the world to conferences is because you're hoping to get something that you can put into use when you get back home. And there's a story about the quarter inch drill bit inside of this book, meaning if I wanted to hang up a painting right here on this bare wall, what would I need? Well, I would need a quarter inch drill bit. Well, really what I need is a quarter inch drill hole. I need a quarter inch hole to be able to go into this wall. But then what's that for? Well, it's maybe because I want to hang that painting up on this wall so that when people walk into my home, they feel like, wow, this guy's got his shit together or, wow, this guy did this. So we don't want the quarter inch drill bit. We may not even want the quarter inch hole. What we want is someone to walk in through our door and for us to feel seen and respected. The quarter inch drill bit is a means to an end. But what that person really wants is safety and respect. And what happens is that if your event is not marketed as a what's in it for me, and it's all about you, the organiser, it's all about you as the coach or consultant, you will struggle to get retreat ticket sales. Your event has to be marketed as a what's in it for them philosophy.
Smallest viable market
The next idea is around the smallest viable market. If you could only work with 30 people this year, I know, big ask, right? But think about this world of 8 billion plus people. If you could only work with 30 30 people this year, well, you'd be pretty specific as to who those 30 people are. So if you're only going to work with 30 people this year, for this example, you'd be pretty careful as to who you want to invest your energy. You'd be very good at qualifying people. You'd be extremely good at disqualifying people. You would have no issue saying no to the non-ideal clients, and you would have no issue saying yes to your perfect avatar, to your perfect client.
So the smallest viable market means who is the one person that you Who is the one person you could change through your event, through your retreat? Who is the one person you could change? Bucket them into what's known as your smallest viable market. Go get your first sale and then go find another person like that. Go get your second sale. Go find another person like that, like those two, go make your third ticket sale. And you start to create this smallest viable market. And when I launch my events, I make them very specific. The way I ideate my events is I think about one person. Maybe it's a current client, maybe it's a prospect, and I think about what does this person desire? What are this person's goals? And what are these persons with this person's frustrations? If I can nail those four things and I can embed that copy onto my sales page on my website, then I know my event is going to be a slam dunk.
Aligning yourself with world views
Another way you can tap into the smallest viable market is understanding or aligning yourself with the worldviews of those who you seek to serve. What's a worldview? It's how one sees the world. How do your people, and I say people meaning your prospects, What is their worldview? What do they believe? What do they not believe? What do they believe about money, love, sex, religion, about business? What do they believe? And when in doubt, people will act in accordance to their current belief system. And this is where this idea of creating demand is false. You don't want to create demand for your event. Again, this comes back to the lock and the key. You don't want to create demand for your event. You want to channel that demand. What I mean by channeling demand is find people who are already seeking to make the transformation that you can help them with, and you channel that demand into your live event, into your retreat. So you're not out creating demand. You're just funneling people into your event who are already looking for what you want to help them achieve. And that way, you prevent having to convince people that your event is the right thing. In fact, you're just aligning yourself with what they're looking for. You're aligning yourself with their worldviews. And you can think about this in timelines.
What does your prospect want three months from now, six months from now, nine months from now, twelve months from now, to 24 months from now? If you can answer those questions, even on your retreat landing page, your website, then again, aligning yourself with the worldview use of what your prospects desire is going to work in your favor. The next big thing that can help you in your retreat ticket sales and helping you sell out your event is going in with the intention and the energy of not what will make the most money, but thinking what would matter here. Again, this is where you focus on the smallest viable market. When you know your group of people, when you know the 30 people you want to work with this year, you can get hyper clear on their problems, their dreams, their aspirations, frustrations, and goals. And you want to ask yourself, what is the transformation? Again, who's it for and what's it for?
What would matter here?
As you're going into your retreat, as you begin marketing it, as you start to make ticket sales or at least having sales conversations, you need to ask yourself, what would matter here? And I'm telling you from experience, when you do things for the money, it's never worth it in the end. It's not worth it for the clients, it's not worth it for the relationships, it's not worth it just for the time that you spend. And time is your most important currency. You can spend $500 or $500 or 50,000 or 500,000, and you can make that money back. But when you spend five minutes, five days, five weeks, five months trying to build something, you're never going to get that time back. So asking yourself, again, going into your event thinking before you ever launch, what would matter here? Let's just be real. What would matter here in my lifetime? What work do I want to leave behind? What do I want people to say about me on my last day? How would people speak about me when I'm not in the room? Those are the questions you need to ask when it comes to what would matter here. And when you go into your event with that what would matter here energy, you'll notice that the intentionality of your event is way stronger. The group forms a tighter bond. There's a tighter connection. The camaraderie is off charts, the relationships are next level, and you begin to create this community which you didn't have to force like most coaches are trying to do.
Going beyond commodities
The next concept that can really help you scale your retreat and grow your income is this idea of commoditization and going beyond commodities. The mistake I see coaches and consultants making here is that they start with their solution all over their retreat website, all over their website copy is, Here's what you're going to learn. Here's what you're going to learn. Here's what you're going to learn. Here's what you're going to learn. Here's a little bit about my model, my frameworks, my IP. Here's my drawings. Here's my frameworks. Here's how I coach people. It's a very me, me, me, me, me from me focused to you focused, aka focusing on the person who's about to pay you thousands of dollars, is start with their problem. What are the problems that they're experiencing right now? What have they been experiencing for the last couple of weeks, last couple of months, last couple of years? What are the direct cost related to that problem?
What are the indirect costs related to that problem? What problems may happen in the next two or three weeks if nothing changes? What problems might happen in the next six months if nothing changes? What might happen to their relationship, their health, their wealth, their relationships if nothing changes. The best marketing is not about us as the coach or consultant. It's about our desired human that we're trying to change and transform. So when in doubt, focus on the problems. In fact, your retreat website and your retreat conversations for ticket sales should be 95 % about the problems that your prospect is facing and five % about your solutions and how you can help them. In a world where prospects have more information than ever, they're comparing you with your competitors. They have access to so much information at their fingertips, case studies, testimonials. They can do their homework on you. Prospects are more sophisticated now than ever before. So what's going to determine whether or not someone does business with you versus business with your competitor is this level of know, like, and trust. It's It's building that connection with you. And when someone feels like you're able to tell them back their problem, it's better than they can articulate themselves to you.
Again, you start to carve this little place in their heart. You start to carve a little piece of attention in their brain such that whenever they're in pain, they think about you. We've often heard this phrase of positioning your product, or in this case, your retreat, as a painkiller and not a vitamin. For example, in that cabinet over there that you can't see, my wife has a multivitamin supplement box, right? And they're nice to have, right? We take them daily. We feel good. Cool. But the last headache that I had, no amount of vitamins could have helped. I needed a Tylenol. I needed an Advil. That's what we call a pain killer. So your event, your retreat, It cannot be marketed as a multivitamin. It can't be marketed as this would make your life incrementally better. You should come, maybe you shouldn't come. That's not the point of live events. People go to events to solve a pain killer issue. So you need to think to yourself, How do I position my event so that it's not in the multivitamin category, but it's in the painkiller category?
Afraid to live on the extremes
The next big thing that's going to help you sell out your retreat, and it's a huge mistake I see coaches making, is that they're afraid to live on the extremes.
Here's what I mean by extreme. Some people are going to love you, some people are going to hate you. A big portion are going to be in the middle, what we call vanilla. They're going to be indifferent, but you need to be okay being on both extremes. Think about Harry Potter. Did you know that 12% of the reviews of Harry Potter, which is one of the most successful books or franchises or movies of all time, 12% of the reviews are one-star ratings, which means 88% are not one-star ratings. You need to be okay attracting your dream people and repelling the people that you don't want to work with anyways. In most coaches and consultants that I see marketing their event, they're so vanilla with their copy, they're so vanilla with their marketing, they're afraid to ruffle the feathers, they're afraid to speak what's actually on their mind, that their message It becomes so diluted. It becomes so boring that they blend right in with their competitors and wonder, why is no one signing up for my event? Why is no one signing up for my coaching? It's because you're not attracting anyone and you're not repelling anyone.
You're playing it safe by being in the middle. And the best thing you can do when it comes to selling your retreat is pick your spectrum, pick the extremes that you want to play in. And being on extremes doesn't mean you have to be rude. You don't have to verbalize with negative words as to who you're speaking to, but you have to know who are Who are you for and who are you not for. If you've been trying to sell your consulting services, maybe look at your content and ask yourself, Am I on the extremes? Am I in the middle? Am I attracting the right people? Am I repelling? Or am I bringing in the people that I should be repelling? Am I repelling the people I should be attracting. These are questions you have to ask in your coaching and your consulting business anyways. But through the lens of retreats and live events, it should be very clear on your event landing page who your event is for, who it's not for with polarizing copy.
Launch the thing!
And the last tip that can help you sell out your retreat is you have to launch the thing. Stop waiting for it to be perfect. Stop waiting for the perfect sales copy. Stop waiting for the perfect amount of people to sign up. You have to launch your event, learn from your event so that you can make your next event better. And entrepreneurs struggle with perfectionism all the time. We try to make everything perfect, the perfect Instagram post, the perfect coffee, the perfect sales call. We're in this lens of perfect, perfect, perfect. Nothing about my 200 plus events has been perfect. Have I learned from my mistakes? Yes. Do I strive not to make those mistakes? Yes. So I don't strive for perfect. I strive for being better. And just go into your event with that mentality, knowing that you're not going for perfect. You're just going to learn. You're going to observe. You're going to observe, you're going to transform, you're going to help a ton of people out, and then you're going to make your event better so that your next event is better. And your sales landing page just has to be good enough. Again, it doesn't need to be perfect. You wouldn't believe the amount of clients I've worked who have been so afraid to put their landing page out there because it wasn't perfect, when in fact, it was good enough.
It's all they needed to get their first couple of ticket sales. So aim for good enough, not 100% complete. And hey, if you build something of value and no one buys it, blow it up and start all over again. That's what entrepreneurship is all about. And if you want some help brainstorming your next retreat, your next live event, click the button below. Book your free 15 minute Retreat Brainstorm Call with me.
I felt so inspired after reading This is Marketing by Seth Godin through the lens of retreats that I just had to get this video out there. I'd love to hear your takeaways below. Share your biggest takeaways with me in the comments below. I'll see you later.