Do you feel like you’ve invested everything online for your business with no real returns?
Sasha Korobov, a certified coach and organizational psychology, shares her story about why she decided to get off the hamster wheel of online coaching and why starting from the beginning isn’t as bad as you think it is.
Read on for key gems from her business story.
The pitfalls of online coaching
The $30K mistake
I have been a certified coach since 2016 and they teach you everything about coaching and being a great coach but nothing about business. And so naturally you wonder, how am I going to get clients? So, I did what anyone would do – started Googling, looking on Facebook, following the ads that were targeting me on social media, and just trying to do research. Because I wanted to figure out what was next, I started buying up these courses and going to these webinars. I probably spent close to $30K, over those few years just trying to figure it out.
And I finally got to the point where I took a step back and I looked at the industry and it didn’t sit well with me. It felt like a pyramid scheme and I made the decision to pull the plug and walk away from what most people were doing.
I had a good friend who is a coach and she made me realize that I was neglecting business that was showing up at my doorstep without me having to ask anyone for anything – which was the corporate side of things, the speaking gigs, the trainings, the workshops, and the one on one coaching. So I decided to pivot.
What success was supposed to be/look like
At the time, I was in a job where I was not happy. So I was looking for an escape from a situation where I wasn’t happy. On the other hand, I was raised by a single mom and know what it’s like to not have money. The lore of make $100K while I’m sleeping meant I might not be as stressed as my mom was. And I was also looking for a formula or answer that really worked for me.
The strategies that didn’t work
1. Courses with no support
I was energized at first then I was trying things and I had no support except for a login and a password. Unfortunately, I turned that inward and negatively. I thought there must be wires not lined up properly for what I’m doing. I just didn’t give enough. I just didn’t get it. And the more you talk to the majority of people in some of these download your course in a box and done, the more I realized I’m far from alone in this. And that’s when you start to think, okay, maybe I’m not inherently terrible. Maybe there’s something’s missing? And that sends you on the journey.
2. Social Media
I tried every facet of social media – except Pinterest. I’ve done Facebook, Instagram, the PR, email 100 people that you know and everything will be amazing, or put out surveys to find out what people want. But it didn’t work and I realized now that there’s not a whole lot of deviation from the formulas that most of them were teaching.
Social media is not for me. I’m an introvert and the goal of trying to do all the things on social media just to get 1,000 people in my circle wer misaligned with how I operate. That was not the level of engagement and depth that I was looking for in working with people.
The tension between embarrassment and growth - making the decision to walk away
I enrolled in a very high ticket program – it was roughly $15K. The face of the program basically said, here’s the formula. Do it and every quarter, we’ll check in and review your progress. I did everything to the letter that I was asked for. The first launch, nothing. The second launch, the next quarter, the third launch, nothing. No sales and barely any, leads.
Every time I would speak to this course creator, they would say, okay tweak this, do this and see how you do. And I would do it everything I was asked. By the third check in, the person essentially said to me, “why don’t you try going back to what you were doing before you enrolled in this program and see how that works?”
You feel such a sense of shame. Thinking, “how could you have been such a fool because it was so expensive?” Or, “I cannot believe that I’m going to be walking away from this financially, nothing.”
I felt embarrassed and foolish. But I also felt incredibly relieved because I knew that was the moment that I had grown because I decided I wasn’t going to be doing this anymore. I knew there had to be a better way and I was done trying to compete in an industry that deliberately worked to silence the smaller and medium people. And I was just done. I felt purged. So there’s some sadness and some guilt. But also, I slept really well that night.
Starting from the beginning
People think that going back to ground zero means that they failed. But actually, it helps you get awareness that you got off track. You got off track of what was working because someone dangled a shiny object in front of you and promised you that you could make money in your sleep.
But the fact of the matter is when we ditch our intuition and we refuse to have patience in the process, and try everything, you’re missing out. I get why people feel shame and failure by going back to basics. But I think people should also stop and ask themselves if the things after the beginning were the distraction and not the first thing.
About Sasha
Sasha Korobov is an organizational psychologist, communications expert, and certified coach who is on a mission to improve business culture and practices, one conversation at a time. In her previous roles, she served as a communications strategist in the aerospace, rail and construction industries. She lives in Surrey, UK with her husband, two cats, and five very adequate rhododendron shrubs.
