Your Messaging Sucks — Here’s How to Fix It

The Secret Every Successful Coach Knows: Creating Your Signature System

I watched something fascinating unfold during our last coaching mastermind call. 

Laura, a nutrition coach who works with both perimenopausal women and those recovering from disordered eating, was struggling to explain her methodology. When asked how she helps clients, she described it as "working on the relationship with yourself and the relationship with food."

Beautiful, profound—and completely subjective.

This is the challenge most coaches face. We develop intuitive, effective ways to help our clients transform, but when asked to explain it? We ramble. We use vague language. We say things like "I just do it."

Sound familiar?

The Turning Point: Making the Subjective Objective

During our mastermind, something clicked as we explored a concept that has transformed how the most successful coaches market themselves: developing a signature system.

Not a "program" (I'll fight anyone who uses that word), but a clear, named method or strategy that makes your subjective expertise concrete and measurable.

Let me share what happened when we started exploring this concept with the coaches in our group:

Meryl—a fitness coach with an infectious philosophy—had already begun building a brand around "doing cool shit." Everything she creates—her newsletter, clothing, client stories—reinforces this singular message. Her entire approach could be framed around a signature system that asks clients, "What cool shit do you want to do?" and then structures their fitness journey accordingly.

Quinn built his entire coaching practice around "the five powers of fitness," which he has identified as the most important. His newsletter systematically addresses these five powers every week, creating consistent touchpoints that reinforce his methodology.

As one coach in our group put it, "I don't have my own framework for what I do. I just do it." That's the gap we need to bridge.

Why Your Signature System Changes Everything

The most powerful insight from our mastermind came when Mike, who despite looking like a Sasquatch, actually holds a psychology degree from Penn State, shared how he transformed his abstract concept of "mental hygiene" into something measurable.

"When you get to a certain level," Mike explained, "you have to prove not only to yourself and your peers and future colleagues, but to your client in some sort of tangible information."

Mike created charts and scales to track mental hygiene, giving clients something concrete they could see progressing over time. He discovered that when clients can look back at a chart from the last eight to 10 weeks of their mental hygiene training and see how it's affecting them, both positively and negatively, it completely changes their perception of success.

"It's like inches in bodybuilding," he noted. "It's a big deal."

Building Trust Through Structure

Quinn also raised an important question: How do you get clients to open up about the struggles you can't see?

His answer revealed another key benefit of a signature system: expedited trust-building. By laying out a clear methodology from the beginning and relating to clients through personal experience, Quinn found that clients became more receptive. Adding evidence from other successful clients who followed the same system created a powerful foundation for trust.

As we discussed in the mastermind, there are two levels of evidence that your signature system should incorporate:

1. Personal experience ("I've done this")

2. Relatability ("I've helped someone like you achieve this")

Your signature system becomes the framework for both creating and showcasing this evidence, from your social media content to your sales calls.

Authenticity Is Consistency

What struck me most during our conversation was how a true signature system creates alignment across everything you do. As one coach pointed out, the most authentic marketing happens when "your messaging is exactly the same" across podcasts, YouTube videos, Instagram posts, and client conversations.

Think about Mike (yes, our lovable Sasquatch-looking psychology expert). "When I have a conversation with Mike," another coach noted, "he's the same person in real life that he is on a call. On his Instagram, it's the exact same thing. On a podcast, you're getting the same Mike."

That consistency doesn't happen by accident. It comes from having a clear, defined methodology that runs through everything you do.

Your Next Steps: Creating Your Signature System

I'm inviting you to do what we challenged our mastermind group to do:

Set aside 30-60 minutes this week to brainstorm and answer these questions:

- Who are you? (What makes your coaching approach unique?)

- Who do you serve? (What specific barriers do they face?)

- How do you serve them? (What subjective processes could you make objective?)

Then analyze your current messaging. Is there alignment across all your content? Does everything you create speak to the same core methodology?

If you're ready to take this further, I'm happy to discuss on a call and see how we can help you bring your vision to life.

CLICK HERE

Remember what we realized during our mastermind: Everyone you coach is at some point along the spectrum of who you are or who you've been. Your signature system is simply the roadmap of how you got from there to here—and how you can guide others along the same path.

P.S. As one of our coaches put it so perfectly: "When you are the system and your system is coming from you authentically, that's when marketing becomes effortless." I'd love to help you discover that effortlessness for yourself.

Keep Raising the Bar,

Paul Oneid MS, MS, CSCS