Ep #407: The Gold Standard

Welcome to the Make Money as a Life Coach® podcast where sales expert and Master Coach Stacey Boehman teaches you how to make your first $2k, $20k, and $200k using her proven formula.

Hey coaches, welcome to episode 407. Some of y’all are going to love this episode, some of y’all are going to hate this episode. But those of you that like love the tea are really going to love the episode. And some of you that are not being the best client that you could be are going to maybe have a reaction to it. So I just want you to know that. And I’m going to do a caveat here before I dive in.

We’re going to talk about the gold standard today. And I’m going to tell you a couple of stories, which is why those of you that love the tea are going to love this episode. But I’m telling you these stories not to dish the tea, but I’m telling you because in the Entrepreneur Coach membership, I’m having conversations I don’t normally have because if someone doesn’t have them, no one’s going to learn. Like we’re never going to learn. Someone’s got to have the conversation. It’s a millionaire conversation. It’s a big conversation. But I’m having it, having been the messy client, having been the hot mess. I’ve been there.

So you just need to know that I have at some point in 11 years, when I first started coaching, I was not the best client. I have told this story many times in all of my containers. I yelled. I would react by very aggressively when I got triggered and didn’t like something my coach had to say. And I yelled at my first coach twice before she set the boundary and was like, I don’t let people speak to me this way, and also, let’s talk about what happens when you’re having this nervous system reaction. And over the years, I have developed a much more mature response even when I get triggered.

So I was recently telling my students in my Clientele course inside ECM that years later, after that experience, one of the things I learned is, like, I still get triggered in coaching, but the way I respond is so different. I might tell my coach like, listen, I’m feeling really defensive. Like you’ve hit something in me and I know that defensiveness means there’s things to unwind, but I’m also not super available to hear all the things right this second. So I need some time to calm myself on that. Can we coach on something else and I’ll come back to you?

If it’s like really big. I know myself, I have awareness, and I have emotional maturity not to lash out in that. But I wasn’t perfect. I haven’t been the perfect client all of the time, always. And I believe there is always room at every level in the same way that we can increase our ability to coach and become better coaches and better entrepreneurs. There is also an ability to become better students.

And so if you ever joined my Entrepreneur Coach membership, the very first thing I always suggest that you take, if you’re not just jumping in straight to a course that we’re doing live, is ROI, Return on Investment. And I call you in to the difference between entrepreneur investor thinking and consumer thinking. And we’ll talk about this on this podcast. But it’s a big difference. Like in the beginning, I was definitely in consumer thinking, and now I think like an investor, and it’s a very different way of thinking. And so I think that we can evolve how we show up as a coach, how we show up as a leader, how we show up as an entrepreneur, and how we show up as a client. 

So that’s what I want to talk about today. Because I’m teaching Clientele in ECM and the calls are so incredible, and like, oh my god, every single call everyone’s like, what is happening? And we can’t fit like every single nuanced thing in. And so I wanted to do some podcasts to kind of touch on some of the things. But if you want like the full magic, you’ve got to get into the membership and take the course. Okay. But we’re going to talk today about the gold standard. 

So I’m going to start with a story that developed this story is the reason I now am teaching the gold standard that I didn’t teach before. And I’m going to teach the story knowing that I don’t even remember who actually made this post. So if you’re listening and you’re like, it was me, I don’t actually remember who it was. The person didn’t matter. It was like the behavior was so interesting. And if you engaged on this post also and you’re listening, I don’t remember not a single person who engaged on it. So I’m not holding anything against you. I’m not like, oh, you engaged on that post. Like, I don’t remember those types of things. I just remember the lesson that needs to be taught from it. So here’s the story I’m going to teach you. 

So I launched something very exciting this year called A Day in 200k. And it was the most ambitious project that maybe I’ve ever taken on because I was asking of myself to teach 200k concepts that I normally teach at a three-day live event that costs $25,000 to be a part of because you had to join the Mastermind to also get access to the live event. If I ever sold it by itself, I would charge probably $5,000 or $10,000 to come spend three days really truly masterminding your business and talking at a, you know, strategically at a really high level. So it’s a very valuable event.

And I asked myself to take the concepts and teach them in one day and teach them in a way that would not overwhelm anyone, even though it’s three days of content and six months of masterminding, to bring that down into one day and be highly valuable and for everyone to really understand what being in the mastermind would be about and to really take things from that day. Like, to be worth a lot of money and again, for no one to feel like this is above my head and I’m not catching it all in this condensed time frame. 

I’ve never taken on that; like, that was the most ambitious project I’ve ever taken on. It took so much of me and my own personal coaching and my own planning and my own organization and process and putting the event together. Like, it stretched my team; it stretched myself. I remember, like, it was one of those big, huge ideas that I made myself say yes to, even when I didn’t think I was equipped to say yes, and it felt really big. So I’m telling you that to know, like, to hear the amount of energy and time and dedication and effort that I put into this event. 

And people that were there and it was $500, and people were like, it’s ridiculous how much value I got for $500, and they could not believe the set that I created in my, it was so beautiful, just unbelievable, the amount of love that we put into this event. And it was just glorious. Like, people said that they could not believe what a day it was. Like it was just a win in every way possible. And I say this because I’m really setting up this story from my perspective. It was the best work I’ve ever done.

People got insane value. We got 100 applications at the event, like the first 24 hours during the event while the event’s happening. We’re calling people out, we’re like congratulating people for sending their applications. That’s $2.5 million of business in one day. And we were still getting applications after that as well. It was one of our biggest enrollments that we’ve had in a very long time. We increased our revenue by a million dollars. Like, such an incredible success.

 And we had a Facebook group with this A Day in 200k. I do this when I deliver live things is I’ll ask you in the Facebook group, what do you hope to take away from the day? After I’ve already created the content so that I can make sure I add little pieces in and make sure I get a wide variety of what people are hoping to get. And in this case, I actually was up until 11 p.m. the night before, and I got no sleep, none. I can’t even believe I was able to deliver at the level I was because I rewrote the entire thing. From 7 p.m. till 11 p.m. the entire day, like rewrote all of the flip charts because it was like consuming what in my brain, everything people wanted from the event, finding new ways to teach it, simpler ways to teach it, wanting it to be the most relevant in my brain, and then no sleep, up teaching. 

I didn’t sit down for eight hours straight, eight hours straight. I did not sit down one time. Like, they even went after the setup the night before and bought me two different stools that would match the background, and I never used them once. Just never sat down. I gave all of me over eight hours in a way that, like, very much people recognized Stacey just gave all of her. And like a next level of her, not just all of my current self, like you got like the next level of my highest self. 

And so we opened sales and we’re killing it, and we’re, I’m in the Facebook group. And here’s what happens. Like here’s how I know like why people do this. I know that when everyone’s buying, it feels terrible not to buy. It feels sad to not be included. It feels disappointing to not be included. And so inevitably, when you have sales communities, like you have a you create a Facebook group around a challenge or a free training or a webinar or a day in 200k or whatever, and you have selling happening in the group. Inevitably, there are going to be people who feel left out and disappointed, and they want in.

Like, that’s the thing that’s important to know is they actually want in. But because they’re sad that they aren’t able to get themselves in for whatever reason. Like, in this case, maybe it’s like they don’t make the minimum, or they don’t have the cash in hand, or they can’t even afford a payment plan, whatever it is. I want to be in, I can’t be in. But I don’t want to feel alone in my sadness. So I want to find people who agree with me or who are in my situation. 

So there was a post that was made in the Facebook group that said something like, and I’m going to get it wrong. It’s not like I don’t remember the exact verbatim, but it was something like, I’m not able to join 200k or I’m not joining 200k this round, but I’m going to keep working on the things, who’s with me?

And what was really fascinating is I saw the post, and I was like, okay, I get this. People do this. It’s not going to get traction. Except because the event was so awesome and people felt so disappointed that they couldn’t go further, it created this like heightened disappointment and this heightened need to connect with other people who were disappointed. So the post went like group viral. 

I was getting notifications like crazy. Me too, me too, me too. Here are all my reasons, here are all my reasons. Me too, me too, me too. And the me too’s just kept coming. So every time I logged into the group, it was the first post I saw. Who’s not joining 200k? Me too. And I want you to imagine. This is the point of this episode.

I want you to imagine that you are this coach and you have just spent months, not weeks, not days, months pouring your entire life and soul into giving people value and way more value than they pay you in order to help them with their own goals. You’ve given so much of you. Like at the end of the day, I had no voice and I was exhausted and I had to take the entire next day off just to physically recover. And I want you to imagine that this is your biggest launch ever, your opportunity for the most sales ever to finally hit your goals. Like you’ve given, you’re receiving, like it’s like your day in the sun. You’ve got this group going on, and the number one post going viral in it is I’m not joining, who’s with me? Me too, me too. 

I want you to imagine how you would feel in this moment. It would be like the biggest fucking downer of your life, I promise you. Even if you can manage your mind and emotions around it and even when you’re making crazy money, you would be like, why on earth is this the number one post?

Now, I want you to keep in mind that if people want to be in this room, if they want to be in the 200k Mastermind, the most valuable thing, if you can’t be in it, that you could do is ask people who are in it, what could you offer me? How do I get there? Oh, you just joined. What were your thoughts that got you to the point of, like, I’m joining, I’m getting resourceful, I’m coming up with the money? Because I even coached people who were like, I don’t even know where I’m coming up with the money, but I’m finding it. And people were making those posts.

Like that’s the crazy thing is that people were like, oh my god, I just applied. I’m so, like, there were two that stood out to me. Oh my god, they were so good. Like, what they did in their brain to decide to join and then come up with the money. Like, people were making insane offers to clients, like VIP days, like special offers. People were coming up with $10,000, $15,000, $20,000 in a small amount of time. And those posts were not the viral posts. 

Slamming my fist on the table for you all, right? Like, what? That’s the post you want to go viral for yourself as the coach, but also for all of the people who want to be in the room. We want to be mining the brains of the people who are getting in the room, who are figuring it out. I would want to know who’s come up with a creative offer and how do I duplicate that? What did you think to be so in alignment with that offer that people took you up on it? Like how did you say it? What did you say? Who’s the one that took you… like I would want to know everything. And that is not the post that went viral. The post that went viral was I’m not joining, who’s with me? Me too, me too. 

And finally, I stepped in and I deleted the post and then I made a post in the group and I talked about it. And I said, listen, guys, like, what are we doing here? This is not the success principle. Like, this is not the golden standard. Right? Like imagine if this was your launch. Imagine if this was your group. Imagine if you just poured this level of value into and this was your best launch. This was your attempt to like break your own records. Like imagine if you have people that are doing these incredible things and making 20k in a week in order to apply for the Mastermind and those posts are being passed up by who’s not joining? Me too, me too, me too. Imagine if people were me tooing your post about not hiring you. Like, this is not the gold standard of behavior. This is not best client behavior. 

And in order to be a best coach who attracts the best clients, more so than that, right? Because I still made a lot of money, many millions of dollars. We had 100 applications in day one. Like, I’m fine. We’re okay. But in order to become that coach, you have to also be that client. If you’re in a group me tooing not buying, who is buying from you?

We have got to step into a higher level of behavior as clients. If you want to have a higher standard client and be paid at a higher standard, you’ve got to really start thinking about, does this behavior, is this behavior something I would want my clients to replicate? Am I canceling all the time? Am I not making my payments? Am I ghosting on my payments? Am I like, sorry, I can’t pay you? Am I, like, well, I didn’t get results, so I’m not going to keep paying you even though I signed up for this thing? Are you not open to coaching? Are you not showing up, not participating? Are you behaving in the way that you want people to behave with you, which is the gold standard, right? Like, do unto others as you wish others to do unto you. 

I really want to call you all in to the gold standard of client behavior because this is not a unique case. This has been happening for years. I was telling my clients in Clientele. I was like, because someone said, we had a call today where we were kind of talking about red flags and like what to do the moment you find a red flag, whether it’s on a sales call or in the coaching relationship, of someone not being a best client.

And one of the things that we talked about is like, I have historically created an incredible net worth from an incredibly valuable network from my invisible funnel of being in alignment with my best clients and being the best coach for those clients and being an energetic match for who I want to work with and going out and delivering to them like crazy and then having word of mouth and referrals insane, being a whisper in the room for people. 

But also, the more people you work with, the bigger population that you serve, you can’t keep this type of behavior out. You can’t keep non-best client behavior out. You’re going to have that. That’s going to be part of it.

So if you want the majority of your clients as you grow your business more and more and more to be best clients, they’re always going to behave to the standard that you call them to. You don’t have to be the best client in the beginning because you’re learning to be a student of coaching. And, you know, coaching can be triggering and we don’t think about our behavior sometimes. We’re just operating from our emotional state. 

But as coaches, the years that I have engaged, 11 years in business, nine of them coaching coaches in the thousands, I have seen some incredibly bad behavior coming from coaches, some incredibly misaligned behavior. I actually don’t think this was bad behavior. I think it’s like misaligned behavior. You just wouldn’t want your clients to be me tooing I’m not buying with you in your group and all your potential buyers seeing it. Like, that’s misaligned behavior.

But I’ve seen like downright bad behavior. I’ve had people in my inbox, coaches screaming at my employees, threatening us for many reasons. It always feels like a valid reason when you get worked up. But I’m always like, this is a coach, right? Like someone who teaches emotional maturity to other people. 

The amount of people who have skipped out on payment plans, the amount of disputes I’ve had, it’s not a ton, but like even one is shocking to me when a coach disputes a charge for a payment that they signed up for and cites it as fraud. You guys know that’s actual fraud. I would not do that.

Just blanketly across the board, if you signed up for something that you know is a payment plan and four or five payments have been taken out, and then you claim that sixth payment as fraud or you willingly gave your credit card and signed up for something, but then found out there’s a no-refund policy and then without even asking, actually, this happened once recently where someone didn’t even ask for a refund. They just claimed fraud. But like there’s no way for us to have their credit card information and they were a current client.

So it’s not like maybe someone stole your credit card and used it, but this is a current client. So a current client who’s in 2k for 2k, who signs up for an entrepreneur series program and then without even asking for a refund, just files it as fraud. But they’re a current, like they’re in our system. That’s not fraud. Y’all, like that is not legal. But also it’s just highly unethical.

And if this happens, let’s say we’ve probably had in the last two years 10, maybe 20 disputes, I don’t know. 20 is probably an exaggeration. It’s probably more like 10. But each one, I’m like, this is a coach behaving this way. This is someone who wants to be a coach. This is not good behavior. This is not best client behavior in any way. Breaking a contract, the things I’ve seen, I’m like always asking myself, would you want your clients to do this to you? Would you want people filing fraud against you even though they willingly signed up for something? Would you want someone ghosting on a payment plan for you? Would you want someone me-tooing you? Would you want someone complaining in your group? Would you want someone being mean to other members of the group? Like I’ve we’ve seen that before where we’ve had to be like, hey, listen, we don’t behave this way to other members in the group. 

Would you want someone selling to your clients? That’s been happening since the beginning of time. Like, we have really strong, strict rules, but we’ll have people that come in, and they’re like DMing people in the group to sell them stuff because the people tell us. I don’t know that this is happening without people telling me. But people tell me this. Hey, just so you know, someone reached out and tried to sell me something. Would you want people doing that?

I had at one point, this is maybe four or five years ago, I had a client who was using peer coaching sessions in my 200k Mastermind to tell people all the reasons why they weren’t making money was to do with the 200k process, and they needed her process instead. I’ve had people doing yoga on calls, chatting on calls, like taking phone calls while they’re on video on calls. Like, do you want people doing that with you? 

If you want to attract the best clients and get paid the highest prices in the industry and have an amazing reputation built by word of mouth and have clients who are super responsible, who pay on time, who pay in full, who honor their commitments, who get results, you’ve got to be behaving this way.

If you don’t want your clients emailing you and telling you how your offer needs to be changed to fit them and it needs to be better for them and it needs to be delivered in a different way than you want to deliver it. If you don’t want that for you, you’ve got to be like, okay, then I’ve got to behave in a way that I want my ideal clients to behave with me. And if you’re not having that thought, this is part of what’s keeping the best clients from coming in droves. Which is all I really care about for you all.

I don’t see most of the customer service stuff anymore, but I’m always telling my groups. The times that I do see it or sometimes I’m just curious. Like, I like to know like what’s the main customer service things that are coming in. But mostly we have, like, an incredible team, and things are going swimmingly. But when I do see stuff that comes in and I’m just thinking all the time, like, what? Did you run that through the golden standard? Did you run that through the filter of I am being the best client, and I also want my clients to behave like this with me? And is this behavior, like, where else is this showing up in your mindset, in your energy, in your excitement about coaching, your belief about coaching, your transformation around coaching, your return on investment? Like, where is this showing up that is blocking you from so much money in your own business? 

I recently was asking my community manager, like my programs manager, from the people who have left the membership this year, you always get time and money. Like, those are the top two objections. But if it’s something unique that I could speak to, tell me some of the unique things. And one person wrote something like, I’m so tired of hearing kid stories in your coaching. Either I don’t have kids or I’m not in that place in my life and I don’t want to hear any more kid stories.

And I was thinking about my best client. And my best client is focused on return on investment. They are an entrepreneur, they are an investor, and they are only thinking about how does this apply to me? How can I use this wisdom to get me out of my pain and fix my problem and get me where I’m going and help me achieve my goals? 

And it made me think like, I have never once in my life thought about how a story is delivered to me. I have coaches who talk about pickleball and sports, golf. I have coaches who talk about luxury travel. I have coaches who have used kid stories. I used to use dog stories when I first started out and I didn’t have kids and so my clients who had kids, I would be like telling them a coaching aha I had about a story about my dog. And I had clients at that time who got incredible results. And so I was thinking like, my best client does not care how the story is delivered. My best client only cares about themselves.

And so I’ve had clients who are like, I don’t like that I have to go through a member portal to get a replay and, you know, I don’t like that. We’ve done a lot of upgrades since with our membership. So now like, we have audio only, we just released that, and we’ve made the videos like, so fast and adaptive to, like, what your wifi is. So like it can literally change to match your bandwidth that you have so that the video isn’t disruptive. And we have memory. So like, if you’re listening to it on your computer and then you go to listen to it on your phone, like it saves where you were, your place on the device. Like we have so many really fun things that my tech team has been able to do. But like in the beginning, we had complaints about it. And I was like, what was so fascinating is we got an email that said like, oh, I don’t like that I have to do all this to access the videos. And I was like, oh, this is so interesting.

I pay $20,000 a year for a program and there’s no member portal. So to access the videos, I have to go into Facebook, find the group within my groups, and it doesn’t show up as my pinned groups because my groups show up as my pinned groups. So I have to go in and find the group, then I have to click on the group, then I have to go to the guides, then I have to scroll down for all the different things that are offered and find the weekly calls. I have to click on the weekly calls, and I have to scroll down to the last one that I haven’t seen. I have to find that one. I have to click play, and then if it doesn’t save its spot. So, like, if I already watched half of it, I have to find the spot. I never can find the exact spot, so I have to like go back and rewind and maybe listen to two or three minutes again.

And do you know that I never once had a thought about that? I’m not kidding you. I never once had a thought that was annoying or that it shouldn’t be that way, or it should be faster or easier or better. Until I didn’t even, like, I literally never had a thought about it. Good or bad, just never had a, it was like completely a neutral experience for me until someone presented it as a problem to me with mine. And we actually do have a member portal, right?

So I love having everything, like, very well collected. But my thought engaging in this $20,000 program where that is the process to watch replays if I’m not live, my thought is I cannot wait to get back to this, and this was so helpful. I am the best client. I don’t need a lot of like fancy bells and whistles. Like, I will make do with whatever you give me, however you give it to me, because I’m so focused on my own return on investment. I’m so focused on my problem that I don’t have one second to think about how your business could be better. I’m thinking about how my business needs to be better. Listen, it’s your money, you get to decide. Listen, I just don’t spend money that way. Like I’ve had a coach that was like, oh, I don’t buy things if I can’t go live because I just don’t watch replays.

And I told her, I was like, but if I didn’t watch replays, like I would never get coached. I would lose out on so many incredible things that I’ve watched in replay, and my business would not be growing as quickly as it is, and it wouldn’t be as healthy as it is, and the profit wouldn’t be as high as it is. And I wouldn’t be loving it as much as it is, and I like, there’s just no way I would have created $50 million in sales in three days a week because so much of the incredible stuff that I’ve gotten, I’ve watched in replay and not all of it has been super convenient. But I’m not thinking about my convenience; I’m thinking about my return. I’m not thinking like a consumer. This is consumer thinking. 

The best client is never thinking like a consumer. They’re not thinking that you need to give them notes after your calls. They’re not thinking about, do you have a Slack channel? They’re not giving you feedback for your coaching and how you could be doing better. They’re not thinking about how you should record the session and send it to them and make it audit, like the best clients take what you’re giving them, how you’re giving it to them. They’re in so much pain, or they have so much desire for what they want to create. They don’t have a thought in their head that you should be doing it differently than you are, and they go make use of it. 

But consumer thinking has taught us everything should be the way I want it to be for me to be pleased and for me to get my money’s worth. And satisfaction matters as much as the result. That’s consumer thinking. And I believe that you should absolutely have this thinking as a consumer.

If you go to the Four Seasons and you choose the Four Seasons because you want to be pampered and because you want to be well rested and you want to be bathed in luxury and you want people to speak to you a certain way and you want the food to be really incredible and you want the turndown service and all the things. If you want all of those things, and that’s why you chose to go to the Four Seasons, and then the bed is so hard that you literally can’t sleep on it, you should absolutely, if you spent $30,000 at the Four Seasons, go to them and say, hey, do you have a different mattress? Could you change it out for me? Do you have a mattress topper?

It’s a conversation I actually had with the Four Seasons Orlando. It’s my favorite Four Seasons. And we’ve stayed there so many times and their beds are amazing, and then there was just one room where maybe no one had ever slept on the bed ever and I was 35 weeks pregnant, and I was up all night, and I was like, listen, like, this is not the vibe. I’ve got to get sleep. I’m here on a retreat to get rested because I’m about to have a baby. And I was like, is there anything you can do? Like, how many mattress toppers can we put on this thing? Can you change out the mattress?

And they were like, absolutely, we’d be more than happy to. But when I’m working with a mentor who’s made $100 million and they only take a certain amount of people that they work with in general or the fact that they have a group offering that I can buy for less than what it would cost to work with them one-on-one, and so I can still have access to their brain at $20,000 instead of $500,000. And the only way they’re going to offer that to me is through a Facebook group because they don’t feel like managing a member portal. And I’m going to have to do all those steps, like there’s zero chance I’m going to complain about that.

I feel like it’s a literal miracle to find a mentor and someone who’s made more money than me and get access to their brain. So all I’m thinking about is the brain and their access and the experience and the wisdom. What can I get to solve my problem? I’m not thinking you need to do your business differently so that I feel satisfied and I like the experience. I’m like, the experience doesn’t matter. What I care about is the wisdom. I value that so much higher than anything else. 

Would it be amazing? Yes. Oh my god. If my coach, I think she’s creating a member portal. If one of my coaches, if she creates a member portal and I can log in and have access to every course, like how I do all of my programs, I will freaking like be so excited and I’ll be in there so much. I will love it, but I’m not requiring of it.

And so I want to call you all into this, this idea of thinking like an investor, worried more about your return and what’s happening for you than worried what’s happening for the business, making decisions for how you engage with coaching, not just my coaching, everybody’s coaching, with how would I want my best clients to engage in this situation? And maybe it is something that you feel called to bring up. Maybe you want to say, like, you really want to join, and you’re like, listen, I don’t qualify. I really want to join. Everyone who’s there, who’s made 20k and can be in the 200k room, can we start a wisdom thread? Tell me everything you know that will help me get to that level. 

That’s best client energy. Emailing the company and saying, listen, I value your coaching more than anything. I love you so much and I’m desperate. I don’t have money to literally pay my mortgage this month. What can we do here? There’s nothing in me that wants you to think that I don’t care and nothing that makes me want to blow this off, but like can I take a break? Can I come back? Can we lower my payment plan? Like, what can we do? Because I want to maintain this relationship but I must pay my mortgage. Best client energy. 

I was telling them like best client doesn’t mean you have no friction and no terrible circumstances and it’s not hard to pay your coaching or honor your agreements or hard to show up. That’s not what it means. My best clients have lots of hard circumstances, but they figure them out. Best client energy is, hey, listen, I love your work and I’m going to take it however you give it to me. But also, if you had an audio-only version, like I love listening to you on the go, and I want to keep listening to you, and listen, I’m going to listen to you however I can listen to you. But I don’t know if this is in your plan. If you had an audio version, it would like, oh my god, I would listen to you 10 times more. Best client energy. 

I’m not talking about like don’t request things that would be your dream come true. But think about like how would I want this presented to me? How would I behave? How would I show up to all of my coaches, not just Stacey, all of my coaches. What would be different about how I showed up to my agreements, to my coaching, to my getting my return, to my own goals, to my own self? I am client one. And I attract beyond that exactly who I am.

You know, it’s so interesting when I had a bunch of people talking shit about me on the internet years ago, every single one of those people had the exact same thing happened to them. I only know this because people told me about it. I don’t like keep up with them. I blocked all of them and moved on. And by the way, people are always asking me like, oh, I bet that felt so good. And I’m like, no, it felt terrible. Why do we keep doing this to each other? Like, I don’t want this for anybody, even people who’ve done it for me. It’s the last thing I want.

But what I do think is when you create an audience by hating on someone else and taking all the people who hate that person too into your audience for profit, so that you can sell them something about ethical selling or make an offer that’s literally the anti-this-person offer, and you fill it with people who hate them, inevitably what you’ve created is like you’ve taken all their worst clients into your business and thought of them as your own best clients. But worst clients behave that way all the time. So when they’re done turning on me, they’re going to turn on you. That’s the way it works.

So we’ve got to think like, what would I want my client to do? I think back on all the people who asked for refunds and didn’t actually ever give us a chance to, like, hey, I heard this terrible thing online. Would you like to tell me your side? Because if this is true, I can’t do business with someone who would do business like this. Like, it just feels like it would be a mismatch in values. But I also know that not everything is true on the internet. So, like, as a company, do you have a response? Would you like to comment? I couldn’t believe that I never, I didn’t receive one of those emails. Best client energy. I heard something, I’m concerned, do you have a response to it? I’m willing to give you a response because we have a relationship here. Best client energy. 

I’ve had a lot of people over the years who when I teach being the best client or I talk about best client, worst client, and I talk about the behaviors of some of the worst clients, they get really triggered because they are doing that behavior. And I want to always say, I love you all, and create room for there to be growth always. I teach from a place of having done things. Like I got behind in payments when I was first starting out.

I remember one coaching call specifically with my very first coach, my one-on-one coach. I told her I was so fed up with pitching and I was so mad. I hate Walmart so much and my vibe is so low and I just want to be coaching and I’m quitting my job. But I was two payments behind on my payments to her. And she’s like, you’re going to quit your job, but you actually owe me money and you owe other people money. Like, we’ve been coaching on the fact that you owe people money. This is not in integrity to just quit your job when you haven’t replaced the money for your own happiness when you owe people money, people who are helping you build your business.

And I was so mad. How dare you? You don’t know what it’s like to walk in my shoes. But she was right. She was right. I was lashing out and being emotionally immature and not going to work and doing the thing to pay the people I owe money to because no one forced me to do that. No one forced me.

I remember when I had a best friend and both her and I had $12,000 of credit card debt in college and she filed bankruptcy and I did a debt management plan and paid all of it off. And I remember her family kept telling me, girl, file bankruptcy. Do not pay this off. In seven years, it’s not going to impact you, you’ll be clear and you won’t have to had to pay any of this money off.

And I remember before even had coaching thinking, no one forced me to spend this money. I overspent. I’m going to pay every dollar back. That feels right to me. No one asked me to walk into the store and buy the clothes. No one asked me to go into the bar and buy the drinks or the restaurant and buy the food. The person I signed up to live in their apartment and pay rent, I could have found a cheaper apartment. I made all these decisions, I’m going to pay for them. 

And I think that this is similar. If you have behavior that when you look at, if this triggered you in any way or anything I ever coach on, the gold standard triggers you, you get to decide: I’m triggered, and what am I going to do with that? Do I want to learn? Do I want to grow? 

All right y’all, I interrupt this podcast. This has never happened before in 406 previous episodes. Today is the day, but it’s sort of perfect. So I had an interruption during this podcast and I could have gone back and listened and reminded myself of what I was saying when I was interrupted with a text and a call. But the story is too good to do that. It’s actually perfect. Whatever I was meant to say, this is better. Are you ready?

I want to end the podcast on this note. I’m recording the best, the gold standard, the golden standard, the best client podcast, and I know that sometimes, as coaches, we live in all-or-nothing thinking instead of in the middle, like this and that, right? You don’t have to be perfect to be a best client, right? It’s showing up the majority of the time, as you want people to show up to you, and also knowing you’re human, right? Like your clients are going to need to reschedule, things are going to come up, you’re going to miss calls, like things are going to happen in the physical world. 

So here’s the story. It’s so perfect. I love ending this way because it is sometimes a triggering topic to have a little humor added in, a little humanity added into it.

So I’m recording this episode and I get a text that says, “Are you coming? The call started.” And then my friend Kara is calling me. So my friend Kara and I got invited to a new mastermind called The Legends with Brooke Hicks, a very private, intimate, invite-only group to work on our businesses and huge impossible goals for the next six months. And I sent the dates to my team, had them put them in my calendar and somehow, some way the first call was inputted incorrectly and it was scheduled at 4 p.m. Eastern instead of 1 p.m. Eastern. 

And so at 1 p.m. Eastern, I’m recording my podcast. I’d ordered DoorDash and had food like that was about to arrive, and about to finish up my podcast, and I get this text that says, “Are you coming? The call has started,” and then a phone call. And so as I’m like, ending the podcast and quickly pulling up the Zoom link, which is already in my calendar, thank God.

I answer the phone and say, “For fuck’s sake, oh my god. Like I entered the wrong time. I’m so sorry. I’m coming. I’m on my way. Jesus Christ.” Like loud. Like, just thinking that my friend Kara is on the other line, and then I hear, “Um, I have you on speakerphone for the whole group.” Including Brooke. So there you have it. And so I get on, and I’m like, oh my god, y’all, I just have to tell you that I was recording a podcast about being the best client. It doesn’t get better than that, y’all. It doesn’t get better than that. 

So if I can recover from starting the call with some people that I’ve never met before on speaker phone late saying for fuck’s sake, I’m not talking about stuff like that. I’m not talking about, like, we had someone accidentally start screen sharing their computer while we were on an ECM call recently. I’m not talking about accidental screen shares, accidental like when your audio goes off, and you’re on the phone with the doctor and suddenly everyone on the call, like those are like mortifying, oh my god, what is happening things that happen in the online world. So don’t take it too serious, don’t take it too far. This isn’t meant to be like, there have been times where I have not been the best client.

But I think the heart of the message is, are we showing up as the golden standard? At like we show up to people’s containers, we participate in people’s containers, we get value in people’s containers, we create a return on investment in people’s containers, we honor things, honor boundaries in people’s containers, and we bring positivity and a decision to grow to people’s containers. Like, are we showing up the way we want clients to show up to us? And what I love about that actually is that you get to decide what that is.

So for me, like, this would never bother me either. Like one of my, if this happened and I was the coach, we all laughed about it. It was a good laugh. It won’t happen ever again and it makes a great story. And like every time someone’s like, something like this happens on my calls, I’m like, guys, calm down. It’s fine. Like, this is the internet.

 So you get to decide what it means. Like, what is your golden standard? It doesn’t have to be mine. Like I mentioned things on the call that I’m like, I would never do this, but maybe you would, and maybe it wouldn’t bother you at all. And so you get to make up your own golden standard, but I would think about it. I would think about if I want to attract the best clients, I’m client one, and I attract similarities, frequencies that I’m on. I attract whatever is an energetic match to what I’m putting out into the world.

So, at the first and like foremost conversation of creating a clientele that is truly remarkable and defines your career, make sure that you are part of someone else’s clientele and you are defining your experience in their career. Like you are a part of their, you’re a best client story of them. Like, my thought is always, I will be most improved player, and my results will be something that people want to brag about, and I will proudly, with much gratitude, brag about them. Like I will be like your best client testimonial. Like that’s kind of how I like to roll when I’m not dropping F-bombs and late to calls. 

I will say after the first call, though, the amount of self-coaching I’ve done on just the like five minutes of coaching that I received on the call, the first call, like I have already moved mountains. So I think like that matters more. So define your own golden standard, gold standard, whatever you want to call it. Define it for yourself. What is the best client for you? And is there anything you need to clean up on your side of the street? And then just be keeping that in mind. You are client one, and are you contributing in your coach’s environments in the way you would want other people to contribute to yours when you’re posting, when you’re showing up?

Again, and then like align with that and let that be part of your invisible funnel, part of the thing that attracts the best people to you is they watch you show up and they want to be the type of client that you are. So many of my people tell me, I’m going to be your best testimonial. I’m going to be your most improved player because they’ve seen me be the most improved player in so many other spaces.

All right. I love you all so much. I hope this gave you a really good laugh, the way that it did me and my new mastermind. All right, have an amazing rest of your week. I will talk to you next week. Bye-bye.

Hey, if you’re ready to make money as a life coach, I want to invite you to join my 2k for 2k program; where you’re going to make your first $2,000 the hardest part using my simple five-step formula for getting consults and closing new clients. Just head over to StaceyBoehman.com/2Kfor2K. We’ll see you inside.