#223: Why More Information Isn’t Growing Your Biz (and What You Actually Need Instead)

Doors are open this week for Coaching Biz Builder — my 8-week roadmap for new life coaches to go from “I’m trying to figure this out” to signing clients with clarity and confidence. 

Enrollment is open for a few days only → Join Coaching Biz Builder

If more information were the answer, you’d be booked out by now. Between Facebook groups, YouTube, free downloads, and ChatGPT, you’ve collected a mountain of tips—but still feel stuck. In this episode, I break down why information overload keeps you spinning and what actually gets you clients: clarity, strategy, and support (aka integration).

You’ll hear real examples of “fragmented tactics” (reels, LinkedIn articles, cold DMs, funnels, ManyChat, freebies) and why they stall out without a clear niche, message, offer, and client-path. Then I walk you through what to focus on instead so your actions turn into discovery calls and paying clients.

🔑 What You’ll Learn

• Why information ≠ integration: the real reason random tips aren’t moving your business forward
• How to pick the right strategy for your current stage (and ignore “do everything” pressure)
• The 3 essentials that create momentum: clarity (niche, message, offer), strategy (visibility → conversations → clients), and support (personalized feedback to fix leaks)
• Freebie & funnel pitfalls and how to connect them to an offer people actually buy
• A simple lens to evaluate any tactic so you stop wasting time and start booking calls

Chapters

• 0:00 Doors Open: Coaching Biz Builder
• 1:24 Show Intro & Visibility Focus
• 2:11 The Problem: Information Overload
• 5:16 Why Tactics Fail Without Context
• 8:36 Integration Over Information
• 10:53 The Three Essentials: Clarity, Strategy, Support
• 15:18 Strategy = Visibility to Conversations
• 19:13 Real Talk: Investment and Growth Mindset
• 22:30 Program Walkthrough & Outcomes
• 26:04 Final Reminder & Closing CTA

Transcript

Michellekuei: 0:00

Before we dive in, I gotta tell you, this is the week. My program, Coaching Biz Builder, is officially open. It's an eight-week roadmap that helps new life coaches to go from I'm trying to figure this out to signing the client with clarity and confidence. So if you've been getting out there and you're all confused, spinning in circles, trying to figure out exactly how do I make this coaching business work, and you've been piecing everything like random advice, strategies, or tips that you can hear, this is your chance to get the step-by-step clear strategies and intentional plan that would get you on that path to build your first 5k month, if not the next. Um, doors are open only for a few days. So head over to the link in the show notes and grab your spot inside the coachingbizbuilder.com. And like I said, this is my exact step-by-step roadmap that how I have used it to build my own life coaching business and how I've been helping other coaches to build their coaching business. So if you've been waiting and looking for a program out there that hands you the roadmap and do the most hand holding with you, this is it. Okay, so let's jump into today's episode. Hey coach, welcome to Make It Visible Podcast. I'm Michelle Quay, your visibility marketing coach, and I help female life coaches to get seen in all the right places, attract happy paying clients, and build a coaching business that actually feels good to run. Even if you are still trying to figure things out. Each week I'm giving you visibility tips, simple marketing strategies, and showing you how to create the kind of content that connects with your audience so that you can stand out, build your authority, and attract clients who's already feeling like a yes before they jump onto your discovery call. So grab a notebook, pour yourself a favorite drink, and that's make your coaching business visible. Today we are going to talk about why more information isn't going to grow your business and what you actually need instead. So it here's what I've noticed that a lot of coaches have a lot of questions, and I don't blame you because I have a lot of questions too regarding marketing. So, what is the first thing that I go to? Usually it's a community that I belong to. So I will go into the community and I will pop in my question. Well, has anybody done this X, Y, and Z? And what happened? You get a lot of information and you get a lot of advice that hop onto the common, give you like what worked for them and what needs to be done, and you end up getting 10 and 30s and if not hundreds of ideas and things that will work this way, if you do this, if you do that. So having more information, if having more information was going to help you to build your business, then you probably would have already booked your coaching client, right? I mean, if you Google it, you ask every Facebook group, I'm gonna I'm planning to do a workshop. Who out there has done this before and what had worked for you? And people are not shy from sharing their perspective, their opinion, their advice or their tip. And you probably have also gotten uh uh private messages from coaches who work with coaches, um, and you end up having this information overload. And nowadays, with the ChatGPT and being able to pull all these information and resources from everywhere, you probably got tons of different strategies and ideas that Chat GPT had given you. And yet, here you are still wondering why is my business not growing and why is it so hard to attract my paying client? Or why is it that when I uh put out this workshop, when I try all these uh launching strategies that other people are using, why is it not working for me? So today we are going to talk about why more information is not the answer and what would actually move the needle when it comes to getting and signing your paying client. Because your coaching business does not need another random tips or information, it needs to have a plan, a strategic plan. And one of the things that I really love is to be intentional about your plan. And there's a reason why you're on social, you're going around and you're consuming those in information, but then you probably found yourself consuming a lot of information, but yet when it comes to implementation, you don't have that strategy. So here's the problem with information overload. Um, the problem is when you're new in business, every piece of advice feels important. Right? Every piece of advice feels important. And chances are people are out there and they're sharing and they're saying, Well, I've tried this, I've tried that, and this is not working, and this is what work, and this is why you should do this. So one coach says, post three reels a day, right? Or post more reels because reels are working, so you feel the pressure of having to turn on your camera and producing more reels. The another one says, Well, forget about reel, just do the LinkedIn article. The LinkedIn article is doing great, so go to LinkedIn article. So now you're finding yourself, okay. So I have to figure out what to write and if I'm going to publish, well, does LinkedIn article, is it the same as newsletter? Now, how is that different from the email? And and the wheel just turn and on and on and on. So it's never stopping. And then someone else swear by the cold cold DM, right? Uh, do you need to get more leads? They need to you need to jump into someone's uh private messages. So there's the many chat that comes in. Now you see all these people saying common uh cheese in the comment below. I'll send you the link. Why? Because they're probably utilizing something uh automated, something like a tool like many chat. And you're sitting there and thinking, Well, do I need to get that? Because apparently that's working, that's getting people's uh uh leads and that's getting clients. Or maybe you hear something about a fancy funnel or ads, and then you're sitting there and wondering, Well, maybe I should try that because here you are, you're still struggling with getting paying client. And what happened? You try a little bit of everything, you're getting all busy because all these funnels require setup, right? If you get a subscribe to many chat, then you have to learn how to set it up. You have to uh write the template, you pop your question into chat GPT, give me a template of how I should uh pursue someone inside a private message. So it's gonna give you all these information and you pop it into the many chat, you have to set it up and you have to test it. And if it's not working, it just actually um it actually sabotages your relationship with this potential client. Now that person feels like I'm getting a solicitation um from just connecting with you. So essentially, right, you are so busy all day trying all these different tools, but nothing really is working, and that's because information without context just creates more confusion. You need to have these information within context. Why am I doing this? What is the purpose behind this? You don't need to have every strategy, but you need to have the right strategy for the business that and and the season of your business right now, not a year or two years ahead. Um, you might not need a funnel at this current stage. All you need to do is actually just making yourself visible, right? So maybe your consistency is not there and you're struggling with coming up with content. So you don't have anything to put out there. So forget about the tool, the fancy tool that you're gonna use. You need to focus on creating the content first. You need to know, be clear about what you're going to write, what you're going to create. And this way you can pick the right tools. Otherwise, you keep stitching together these fragments, hoping that one will magically unlock the client uh to get the clients to come in. So that is the problem with um the problem that I see with a lot of coaches who's getting this information overload. And that's because you have all this information available that's everywhere, right? You turn on social media, there's always going to be someone out there wanting to help you to build your coaching business. And so you end up consuming all these information because they're essentially all important, but they may not be the right tools or right resource for you without that context. Okay, so let's talk about now that you have the information, let's say you do have the information and you did you gather enough resources and you've learned from uh one of your favorite coach that you wanted to uh uh continue to follow, you consume only the information from that particular coach. Now let's talk about why information is so hard to integrate and why integration is the missing piece. Now, information says here's here's a list of ideas that I have for you, and here's a list of important things that you need to do in your coaching business. So, for example, you need to have a niche, you need to have uh clarity to the to the messaging, you need to have a package, you need to have a way of uh putting yourself out there. So maybe choosing a platform, maybe it's Instagram or Facebook or LinkedIn, whatever. Those are information. And these are the lists of ideas that you'll probably already have. Now, integration says here's how this fits into your business, your goals, and your audience. So, for example, someone might tell you that start a podcast, great idea, right? Great idea. And chances are you'll probably listen to this podcast because years ago, someone gave me this idea. You should start a podcast. Great, start a podcast. But if you don't have a niche that's clear or a way to turn your listeners to a discovery call, or you don't understand what, right? What is that intention behind the episode that you're producing? And what do you hope this episode is going to do for you, or this podcast is going to do for you? It's just another time sucker. It's going to suck out your time because now you have to do figure out what to produce on that podcast. Then you have to go about producing it, and then you have to figure out which technology is it going to am I going to use? Should I put it on YouTube or should I just stay with the podcast? Which is a question that I just saw someone asking in another coach community. Like, should I be on podcasts or should I be on YouTube? Since everybody says that YouTube is doing well, like which one do I go? So you start spending all that time trying to produce that one episode of podcasts, and yet you put it out into the world. You're just kind of, it's just another piece of uh content that's hanging out in the world, and you have no idea of how to turn that into a client attraction weapon or leverage that you can use in order to build your audience and in order to turn your listeners into a client. Or maybe you heard, right? Creating freebie to grow your email list. And this is one of one of the topics that I love to talk about because I I have my clients work on their freebie so that they can grow their email list. So it is a strategy and the information that you have heard is correct. Um, you do want to have a freebie that that would actually take your follower into your email system because then you can have a direct way of communicating with them. It's an amazing strategy and it really works if you know how to work it. But if you if you're freebie, right, people say, oh, to create a freebie to grow your email list. Great. So what do you do? You jump into Chat GPT and it gives you a list of all these freebie ideas, and you're not quite sure which one to pick. You pick the one that looks good to you, but when you really truly look at it, it's not something that your your audience wants. So if your freebie does not connect to your actual offer, then all you have is a list of people who's never going to buy. And I personally have made this mistake because when I first started my life coaching business, I was told that I need to have a freebie. So I created tons of freebie and they were valuable. Like if I look back and I still have them sitting in my Google Drive, but if I look back, these are valuable uh resources that I could have charged $7 or $20 because I put a lot of effort into creating them. So what ended up happening was I create a list of all these freebies, but it was attracting the wrong people. It didn't give me the result that I was hoping for, and therefore I came around and I thought, well, the email marketing is not working. And so for a very long time, I didn't put out newsletter at all, I didn't write email at all because I knew it wasn't going to work. Because my assumption was these people who jump to my list since they're not buying, therefore the email marketing is not working. You see the difference? Information alone does not grow your business. You need to take these information and integrate them so that it fits into your business, your goal, and it is aligned with the audience that you're trying to serve. Okay, so if information is not the answer, then what is right? What is the answer, Michelle? So there are three things that you're going to need in order for these information to be integrated, right? Clarity is first one. You need to have a clear niche, a clear message, a clear offer. Without these foundations, no matter what kind of tactic that you're going to follow, you're going to use, it's not going to make sense. You're always going to find yourself coming back in a full circle, trying to figure out, okay, so that was not the niche, or that was not the message that people resonated with. And therefore, no one is jumping onto my offer. Even until today, I'm still constantly looking at my niche, looking at my messaging, making sure that it actually makes sense and taking my audience to become my paying clients. And I'm constantly going back to do audits on myself to make sure that I have these foundations right so that everything that I create makes sense to fit in my business. So, first of all, you need to have the clarity, right? Clarity to the niche, clarity to the message, clarity to the offer. Um, without these foundations, there's no amount of strategies or tactic or tips or advice that you find out there are going to work. The second important thing is that you need is you need to have strategies. There's two schools of thoughts, right? There's people say, oh, there's no formula out there, there's no framework, there's no strategy, and there's no steps that you have to follow. Not true. Okay, uh, not true. Think about um, let's put it in the in a more woo-hoo sense. I know a lot of you out there are doing the holistic uh coaching, and you might be in the energy, energy uh niche, or energy healing or reiki niche. Um, let's put it in that context, right? Um, manifestation works when you create that energy, but to allow the universe to send and to receive, right? But you cannot receive unless you actually put in the work to create the dream that you want to create. So you can sit there in a locked room, in a quiet room, and you can meditate, you can manifest, you can you can draw up the whole entire business plan as much as you want and as high energy as you want to. But until you actually put these energy into creation, you won't be able to actually take action that allow you to receive what you have manifested. So, in other words, a strategy is basically a simple plan that connects what you do, which is visibility, to conversation, right? Why do you go out there to talk to people? Well, it's visibility. Now, why do you need visibility so that you can generate conversation? So if you're sitting there and you're not having conversation all day about your coaching business, then what are you doing? Right? So essentially, if you want a business, you want clients, you need to have conversation. And how do you get conversation? You need to put yourself out there, and this is why you're on social media, this is why you create podcasts. If someone says, Oh, go create podcasts, great, create podcasts, but you need the conversation that comes after. And that you need to have a step-by-step plan. You need to make sure that it makes sense. And this is where the word funnel comes in, right? People see you, that's the beginning of the funnel. And then what do they do? They come inside your funnel. Why do they come inside your funnel? Not to become your client right away, they come into your funnel because you start that conversation first before they turn into your client. So, with that, you need strategy behind it. And there is a formula for all this. Otherwise, I mean, all the marketers who claim that there's a formula out there, I mean, they didn't just claim it out of the blue, right? People called it formula, called it steps, called it uh framework for a reason because these are the things that will take you to a step closer to the business that you want. Now, you can call it framework, you can call it formula, whatever it is, right? These are step-by-step plans. Just like you're learning how to ride a bicycle, for example. You need to get the bicycle first, right? You need to understand how the bicycle works. When you paddle, you move forward. And these are the things that are similar to the basic foundation of the framework or the roadmap or the um uh formula that you see out there to attract clients. So you need strategy, that's the bottom line. And then you also need to have the support, um, someone to actually look at your business to see where you're spinning your circle and help you to identify why you're spinning in circle. I bet that there's a lot of you out there, you probably have already created some sort of lee magnet. Now, freebie, right? Um, why is your audience not downloading the support that you get? Is that someone is going to look at your lead magnet, your freebie, and being able to tell you, well, this is not working, or that copy, that phrase is not working, right? You don't have someone to do that for you, and you're just simply relying on ChatGPT. ChatGPT can only brainstorm with you, but it can give you a personalized feedback and say, well, based on what I know about your audience, this is not gonna work, right? So it makes perfect sense why nobody wants to grab it. Or perhaps is the strategies of how you introduce this freebie. I cannot tell you how many times my clients, my own clients, who have created freebie and it just sit on their digital shelf. They don't talk about it, they don't put it out there, and I'm like, you created a great resource. Why aren't you talking about it? Because there's no strategy to back it up. So you need someone to look at your business to see where you're spinning in circle and where is it leaking, right? If you created it, there's something that's leaking that caused this thing doesn't work. It's not because you didn't do a good job, it's probably something is leaking, and just like a leaky pipe, we need to figure out where is it leaking so that we can close that leak so that you can get more paying clients. And that is why a lot of the courses and free advice, like the mini courses, because it only shows you, right, the step number one, but it doesn't show you in order to get to step number two, you might need to get the bigger course or or you need to get to the paying investment. Now, personally, this is something that I wish I knew when I started my own coaching business, is that I was very much like you. I was going around and downloading all these freebie and watching a lot of YouTube. I figure, because I already spent it so much investing in getting my certification as a coach, as a life coach, right? And so when it comes to building my business, I was trying to save money. I was trying to look at my bank account. I had to be really strategic because I actually have a mortgage to pay. So the monthly bills, they do add up. So I didn't think about investing to work with uh a coach right away. I spent times looking for free resources. I put, like I said, I created tons of different freebies, right? Um, but eventually what I realized was that in order to make money, you need to be willing and be open to invest money in your own business. Otherwise, because you're if you think about this mindset, right? Um when we're looking at to work with clients, what we want is we want them to invest in us. But then on the receiving end, right, we're sitting here, if we're not willing to invest ourselves, how can we convince our client that, hey, in order to growth, right? No matter whether you're in your business or or your personal growth, in order to have growth, you can't do it alone. You can't, there's just no way that you can do it alone because we constantly blindsided by all these things that's happening around us. So if you want growth, whether it's your personal development or your business, you need to be willing to invest in yourself in order for the growth to happen. So here's the big takeaway. Um, your coaching business does not need more information, it needs integration. Okay, you might want to write this down. Your coaching business does not need more information. What it needs is integration. Uh, in order to have integration, you need a clarity to what is your niche, your messaging, your offer, and you need to put it into context, right? At what stage do I need to use my messaging? And how do I leverage my messaging so that I can attract the right people into my business who's going to look at my offer? That is where the strategy comes in. And you need the support in order to help you to figure out where is your business leaking that you're not getting the paying client. And that was the reason why I created the coaching business builder. Um, my eight-week program, which is designed to help you to get clients, build authority, and finally having a coaching business that feels real and not just waking up next day and wondering where am I going to get my next client? So this week I'm opening the door to the enrollment, and it's going to be this week only. And this is probably going to be the last enrollment for the year in 2025. Um, inside the eight-week, uh, we'll meet every single week. Inside this cohort, what we're going to do is we're going to nail your niche, your messaging, and creating your signature offer. We're going to build your visibility so that the right clients will actually know who you are, where to find you, and why specifically I have to hire you. Right. And that's always been the hardest part with a lot of the coaches that I work with. It's about identifying what is so unique about them and why their clients should be hiring them. Um, and we're also going to create a client attraction system that fits your lifestyle, that fits you. Um, some of my clients they don't like the social media. And so you don't actually need to have social media in order to get paying clients. It's not like black and white, right? If you like social media, if you don't mind social media, social media is a great way to get your paying client. But let's say you're someone who just don't like social media, we can still create a client attraction system for you when you're doing doing without social media. So if you've been sitting there and trying to piece together all these advice, uh tips and videos or free resources, free downloads, and chat GPT, um, this is your chance to stop guessing and actually building a business with intention, with purpose, and with strategy. So the enrollment is only opening this week. Like I said, this is probably the last enrollment that you're going to see in 2025. Um, there is a link in the show notes to join us inside the coaching biz builder before I close the door. So, with that, remember you don't need more information. What you need is integration. Thank you for listening to Make It Visible Podcast. If you love this episode and want deeper support for your coaching business, head over to elevate lifecoaching.org and see how we can partner together to turn your passion into a profitable business. I help female coaches launch and scale their coaching business faster than ever without wasting time and money, filling the gaps in your marketing strategies, creating a simple and easy to follow system so you can accelerate on the path of coaching business that you love to make up to. Head over to elevatelifecoaching.org and wrap a free strategy out today.