This helped me coach my clients better

Just landed back on the Gold Coast from Singapore and this one poured out of me

Every single client I met in person this month said the same thing.

They love how clearly I explain concepts, and it's because I teach in shapes. Arrows, circles, little messy iPad scribbles.

But then something hit me on the flight over. I've been teaching the wrong shape for 18 months. The funnel drains and runs out. What I actually teach spins and never stops.

Once you see the shape your work really wants to live in, everything clicks so much faster. Have you ever thought about yours?

Come find your shape with me

👉 DM me on Instagram - what shape is your business?

Transcript

Hello, my loves. I am back inside of my home studio office on the Gold Coast. I literally just landed last night, so I'm not jet lagged. But I was saying this to my client, Joe, today, and let me know if you agree. There's a two-hour time difference between Singapore and the Gold Coast. It really is nothing at all. But I always find that the shorter the time zone difference, the more it stuffs you around. Does anyone else find that? Like, if I'm going to Europe and there's, like, a 16-hour time difference, there is something in my mind that I'm like, "Right, I'm gonna knuckle down. I'm gonna push through. I'm gonna stay awake all day. I'm gonna try and get my body clock back." But because it's only a couple of hours, you kind of don't think much about it, but all of a sudden it starts to bleed into your day, like your eating times, your sleeping times. Anyway, it's very weird. Like, I'm readjusting, but I wouldn't call it jet lag. So I'm still very much, like, on the highs of travel, maybe as you can tell. But it was the most serendipitous couple of... Like, actually all of July has been, but most serendipitous week. Because I went there to meet my clients in person, had unbelievable in-person coaching sessions with them, and workshops. Like, I literally, to put it plainly, cannot believe that they flew me over to Singapore to meet them, and, and I got a holiday out of it. Like, unbelievable. But that is the life we get to create. Hell yes. And I also got to play tourist. So I did all the things. I went to the Supertrees, and I walked around the s- the Singapore CBD. I went to the zoo. I did the night markets. I... All of it. It was so fun. Ate, ate, ate all the hawker food and the street food. And then my parents were also flying back from their travels, so I got to see them for a few days. So it was just really sweet and just gorgeous, and it was a solo travel. Like, I didn't go with my boys. I just went on my own, and obviously met my folks over there. But I feel so refreshed. One of the things that really came from the in-person coaching days that I had, and actually not just my three clients that I met in Singapore but also, you know, I had a room full of clients on the Gold Coast here a few weeks ago, and individual sessions as well in person. It's been a very in-persony type of July, which has been unbelievable. Anyhow, every single one of my clients, do you know what they said to me? They said, "We love how you explain concepts, theories, your teachings, and ideas so clearly." On the iPad or on the whiteboard, depending on where we were. And they, in particular, really loved the way that I explained things in terms of shapes and arrows and formats and imagery. Mind you guys, I cannot draw anything else but a stick person. I was not gifted the gift of illustration. Although one of my artist friends said to me, "Rubes, you know that it's extremely trainable. You can just do art classes." I'm like, "I know." So, but anyhow, I haven't done that yet at this stage of my life. Who knows? I might do some life drawing moments. Why not? Why... I've always wanted to. Anyway, but side note, when I share this with you about my client saying, you know, "What you draw is so profound," and I'll go as far as to say, like, what they said was they've never learnt from anyone else the way that they have with me, because they retain information that I give them, and I truly believe it's because I communicate in shapes Like nowadays on my Instagram or on my YouTube, you wouldn't see me without my iPad. It's sort of become a bit of an extension of my brand, and it really happened... I got the iPad last year, guys. So it's not like it's been a huge part of my brand for eight years. It's just that it's been around for the last year, and that's how I've decided to show up. And isn't that how quickly a personal brand can change? But anyhow, I think about how to convey ideas in the form of shapes. And I wanted to share an episode on this because I think a lot of you may struggle with getting out your knowledge and have people not just retain it, but even understand it. Because a lot of you are very technical. I work with a lot of therapists, counselors, doctors, social media managers, uh, fitness coaches, health, money, finance, all niches, healers, all the things. And in every single one of those niches and more, all of you have a technical understanding of your industry and of your art form or of the way that you've learnt how to heal people and teach people things. You all do And like, you know, even I think about my clients who teach, uh, tarot cards. They will talk about Celtic Cross, and they'll think about the shape and try and explain it to people, and it just doesn't quite hit as well until they draw it out and show people. I have another client, and she's a therapist, and sh- one of her, uh, the way that she explains things actually comes out in the form of a ladder. And as soon as she draws the ladder out, people understand, like, where they are on that ladder. It's interesting, isn't it? So let's think about how you can start using the idea of shapes to share concepts, and not just for the sake of it, but because it does better your teaching. It does strengthen the way that you talk about your expertise. It helps you ramble less. This is... I can attest to that. This is for sure. And it also gives you and your clients a place to anchor. The anchor could be as simple as, "Remember that iceberg model that you drew for me?" "Yes." "Okay. So with that iceberg model, I have a question." And the question's about the concept. It's not about the shape. But it could be as easy as that as an anchor. Years later, you'll have people say to you, "Do you remember you drew me that star model in our coaching call? And you particularly said, like, 'You can have a five-star point. You can have, you know, a whatever, seven-star point,' and I've just realized something about the star model." You know? So it anchors your clients to how you deliver something. And because when you start thinking in shapes, when an idea is forming, it doesn't need to arrive in a perfectly done way. I've seen too many of my clients just fluff and bother over whether this word conveys what they want it to convey. And that's all well and good until you just don't do anything about it So when you think about a picture, whether it's a circle or an arrow pointing to another arrow or some sort of flow chart, it kind of explains itself. And it's okay in one sense that it sounds like you're fumbling through it, but at the same time, the person on the other end receiving it is processing the information, is processing the image. They're not gonna hear you fumble through it, and in fact, it's gonna feel and sound organic. And this is why lately, you know, because I've been bringing a lot of visual elements into my world, all those iPad scribbles and, you know, things that you'll see is showing up my Instagram feed. That isn't me just doing it for the sake of it and decorating my Instagram page. It's more so, um, like that these little messy drawings are how I find the point of anchoring in the first place. So the shape comes, and then the understanding follows. And what I mean by that is sometimes I'll be in the middle of drawing a shape or an image, and my clients will be asking me questions, and I'll be like, "Yeah, exactly." So then I'll add more to that image, and then the idea forms in front of us. So yeah, this is something that I think a lot of us need to understand a little bit better, that shapes as well as yapping, as well as audio, as well as carousels, are all so important. Think about how you remember anything you were ever taught well. Like, I don't know about you, but I was spilling over the books. I, I studied commerce in university. God knows why. But anyway, you know, deep in like economic thick textbooks and tax law and all kinds of things, and I would just read and read and read, and I'm like none of this is sinking in. Absolutely none of it. So I would actually need to make either shapes or acronyms in order for that retention to happen for my exams. So obviously that's going back to school days. But coming into like days when I was studying, you know, business with other coaches and in masterminds, I would always be drawing certain images like flow charts, obviously funnels, big one in my world. So I think about like these are the images that I remember. You don't have to remember a list of seven points. You remember the picture. So even when I'm speaking to camera and I'm doing, let's say, a YouTube video, I'll often get asked by my viewers and my clients and whatnot saying, you know, like, "You're so unscripted. How do you do things in such an unscripted way?" It's because in my mind, I'm moving through like a hexagon shape perhaps, and it's like I've drawn it on my iPad where it's like introduction, hook, call out the issue, solution to the issue, objection of the issue. So I know the points that I'm moving through, and it just gives my brain a place to also anchor. Humans, our brains are actually really wired super well to hold onto shapes So when you give an idea in a shape, you make it really portable and you make it really understandable. Like, your person who's receiving that can hold it, and they can come back and go, "Oh, this is actually really interesting because once someone told me this." And what more than likely will come up in their mind is the shape that you've made for them. So if you're already teaching something highly technical, if you've got a concept or if you've got a theory or even let's, let's say it's like a white paper that you wanna deliver to somebody, think about using a shape and something that you may or may not decide to draw out, but it's just in your mental model. More than likely, you'll end up picking up a whiteboard pen and drawing it on the board for them because it'll give them a better understanding. I was, um... This is a side note. I was talking to my son, he's 10, about, um, his chores and stuff, like what he does to help around the house. Now, for years and years, he's always done stuff, like he does the dishes every night, he cleans his room, he cleans his bathroom, he packs his own lunch in the mornings, he clears the dining table, he helps us cook, so many things. And over the course of the last couple of years, he's been paid something for those chores. We've recently switched the model up where that's just a baseline expectation. There's no more money that comes with those chores. He's big enough to contribute to the household. So we've moved to a new model now where he can choose to earn money through, uh, little projects or basically taking initiative is what I'm trying to teach him. So when he takes initiative, then he gets rewarded for that. So it could be extra things like vacuuming out the car or vacuuming the carpets, doing something a little extra, you know, cleaning all the toilets, for example. So for him to retain that, he couldn't quite get it by me just talking to him. So I got the iPad out and I drew the old model and then I drew the new model in two circle formats, and he could see how they fit together like an infinity symbol. And I'm like, "This infinity symbol is you contributing to this household, but it's you becoming an awesome young man, taking responsibility, and also, you know, on the flip side of things, learning initiative and leadership and doing things just 'cause, you know?" And that, that stuck with him. So now he'll say to me, "Oh, you know, it's like that infinity symbol. So I'm... On the right side of the infinity are my little side projects and side quests, and on the left side of my infinity symbol, it's just like my baseline stuff." And I'm like, "Exactly. Exactly." So as soon as I drew that for him, he got it and it locked in. It works for 10-year-olds, it'll work for 20-year-olds, 30-year-olds, 40-year-olds, 50-year-olds. Off we go. Like, our brains work that way. So in my world... Actually, there's something else that I think will be really interesting, and this is sort of like a bit of an epiphany. In my world, especially over the last eight years, my entire business has been- Modeled around a funnel. If you're a coach and mentor, this is no surprise. So I'd say the majority of people will think about their business as a funnel. Top of funnel, down to the bottom of funnel. There's a middle of funnel conversation. Not everyone loves it, and I totally get why. So anyhow, it's in the head though as to, like, if I'm posting on Instagram, I see the top of funnel. I see, like, that in my mind's eye. But I don't know, something's really changed for me a lot, especially I think during this trip to Singapore, and I've... Just, like, sitting on the plane, being in the airport lounges, I'm scribbling on my iPad, and I just thought to myself, "It's not right. It's not my shape." It's actually not my shape. And every single time I sat down to teach it, like, to teach the funnel inside of the daily sales model, kind of felt like I was forcing my work into a costume that didn't fit or into, like, you know, square peg, round hole. And I had this niggle. Like, it was this ongoing sense that I was explaining something to my clients, something true, like something that, that actually does work, but the shape that I chose was a shape that I adopted because the whole industry's adopted it, and I just could not put my finger on it for the longest time. It's like, "What is happening?" But then it actually hit me. I was on the flight over to Singapore, and I love it. Business class, we had Wi-Fi. Fantastic. So it kind of stopped me in my tracks because I realized, "Oh my God, this is not it." Okay, so if you, if you've got a pen nearby, do this with me, or just now do it with your mind's eye, okay? Draw a funnel. So funnel wide at the top, narrowing to some sort of a point at the bottom. Now think about what a funnel does. What's its function? It's literally to drain, correct? To drain something into something else or whatever. You pour things into a funnel. So you pour things into the top. Most of it slides down, and a little trickle comes out the bottom, and then it's empty. Very quickly empty. A funnel has a bottom, and it ends. It is built to run out. So you have to keep refining it from the top forever, refilling it from the top forever. That's why most of us are really bloody exhausted. So if I'm thinking about this from a shape perspective, I'm like, "This is not what I teach at all. Not at all." So next to that funnel, I want you to draw in your mind's eye or on a piece of paper, a circle. Just a wheel. Think about what a wheel does. It spins, and it goes around, and around, and around forever. It connects. It has no bottom to fall out of and no end to run to And once it's turning, it keeps turning, and every turn feeds the next. And this was the whole thing that I just literally could not name, that what I actually teach is a flywheel. It goes around, it compounds, it never drains to a point and stops. So every time I was trying to teach this funnel thing, I'm like, "Ugh, it's not... Oh, I can't. Why is it not clicking?" And I was using a shape that behaved in the exact opposite way to the thing that I was actually teaching. I was actually using a shape that I was fundamentally against. Just ding, ding, ding, ding. Oh my gosh. No wonder it felt so off in my body. But also, do you see the power of shapes? I know I've said it a lot. I've s- Let, let's take a shot every time I say shapes from now on. No, let's not do that. But the container, right, the image that I had was fighting my transformation that I was here to share with people. That's the lesson that I honestly just wanna share today because it's so much bigger than me saying, "Draw shapes on an iPad and you'll retain stuff." A shape will bend your message towards the truth or away from it. And I want you to think, like, if you are conveying some kind of a transformation. So my transformation is the flywheel. Once people are in your world, they stay in your world. I don't teach funnel where it's like volume, volume, volume. You only get a little bit, and then volume, volume, volume. Do it again. So when it comes to your transformation, what does that look like? You know, for some of you, you've just gone off some old textbook from 1976 published by Macmillan Press, and they've drawn some shape, and it stuck with you for some reason, and then you realize, "That's not my shape. That's not how I wanna teach it." Guess what? You're allowed to reinvent the whole damn thing because we are the masters of our own universe. Yes, we are, and we get to make these things and make them ours, make them proprietary. And once you see it, won't be able to unsee it, and it becomes your trademark, and that's what people know you for. Now, I wanna be really honest with you because the timing of all of this is what really matters. Like, I'm only 18 months into teaching this model, daily sales, and I'm not just teaching it, I am experimenting in it every day. I'm in the gauntlet with you guys. I am living it. I am breathing it. I am bleeding through it, and I'm still very deep in the, in the experimental stage. You know what they say, like, um, oh, who was it? You know, the 10,000 hours. I'm nowhere near 10,000 hours, but I'm still excited to be in it. And even up to this point, 18 months in, I've learned so much, but it's only now I've realized, holy shit, I've been teaching the wrong... not the wrong content, but just the wrong philosophy, which is the shape in which your transformation arrives. And it's okay. Like, sometimes it'll show up a little messy, but I would rather have messed my way through 18 months to realize at the 18-month point that I need to be more clear on how I want to teach what I teach on, which is once a client comes in, like, we in the daily sales world don't need to keep hustling for more volume. It's how we continue this life cycle of change and transformation for our clients. So anyway, here is my declaration. From here on, I am teaching the flywheel model. Woo-hoo. And that just feels so good. Like, when, when I got this epiphany, I kid you not, I messaged my husband on Slack. We have a Slack channel for just work stuff, and then text message obviously just for husband-wifey things. So I'm like, "Okay, babe, I need to speak with you. Are you free now?" I sent the Zoom link, and he jumps on and I'm like, "Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." Oh my God, a huge document flew out of me, and I was sharing the whole document, and he's just like, "This is so good, babe. This is actually so good." And he was like, "This makes so much sense." This is exactly, exactly what I was thinking as well over the last few weeks, that something just isn't quite where we want it to be yet, and when we haven't quite landed yet on the magic and the essence of daily sales. So here it is. Like, I am teaching the flywheel. I'm putting the word funnel down. It's eliminated, and I will only give you the very top of the flywheel today because I think it deserves its own episode. But at the simplest level, here is the difference. Because a funnel drains and it narrows to one big sale at the bottom, like the one-to-one or the premium offer, when that sale is done, the relationship kind of dies off, right? Unless you keep trying to keep them in the one-to-one. And yeah, that does happen, but for the most part, a three-month contract's up or a six-month contract's up, and then it's done, and then you're going, "Oh my God, I don't have my next client." So this is why this is the launch model. This is why launching feels like it never ends, and I've done this model many times over. However, a flywheel, because it spins, every offer is a proper sale on its own. So even if it's a $7 sale, perfect, and each one builds more trust. So you can't enter the flywheel until you buy, whereas the funnel model is you enter the funnel at the freebie level. Flywheel, you enter when you buy. So I wanna be very clear on that. So that's like a $7 sale, a $9 sale, anything, a $1 trial thing. As long as they purchase, then they are in the flywheel. And this makes everything so much more cohesive because every single person that enters the flywheel is already a client. You're not convincing them to become a client, they already are a client. And there is no bottom, there is no fallout, which means it gets easier the longer it runs, and they get to stay in there, and they get really cool deals and really cool offers, and they get to go deeper, and there's an ascension model, a continuity model. There's a real retention feeling to it rather than just transactional. So I'm excited for this because, you know, this is actually what I want you to leave with because this part is actually about you. Every single person has a shape in their business, and it's not what you think it is. Like I thought it was the funnel. It's not. Even if you have never drawn the shape of your business or what you teach, give it a go. Just scribble something and just think about like how would you like your business to literally take shape? So I want people to think about my business now as a flywheel. There was a time where in rituals in business, I had an infinity symbol. Inside of LinkedIn Brand Boss, I had a triangle. So shapes, every single shape has a meaning, look it up, and it has a way to convey information and energy to others. So, you know, a circle is very holistic. Triangle is very authoritative. So thinking about like, a, a square is very structural. You know, it's like step one, step two, step three, step four. That's a square-shaped business. So that's exciting. Okay, I wanna leave you with a little bit of fun homework if you care to take this up. One, think about the shape that you're currently running on. So I was running on the funnel. What are you running on? And if it's no shape, you can just write down no shape. You've never thought about this before, that's cool. But if you do have a shape, does it... What does it do? Does the shape contain? Does it drain? Does it climb? Does it loop? Does it branch? So this is interesting 'cause then it'll show you, like, because you picked this, does it resonate with where, what you're teaching on now, what you wanting, what you're wanting people to do now? Number two, find the verb. So the verb is describing what you actually teach as a motion, because the motion reveals the shape. So, you know, things like- Does your work pour? Does it build? Does it ripple out? Does it spiral? Does it go around and around? So for me, in daily sales, it's like daily sales happens again and again, around and around. So catch the verb, and the shape is usually hiding behind it. So if let's say your work is, "Well, what I do is build, and I build in a very formatted way, and I get you this result." Like website people, for example, you build websites. So you build. So your shape will be a square because it's like, "I'm gonna give you this. This is like literally..." Or a rectangle. "This is literally what you asked for, and here is your square." And people would love that. If you're someone who is, like, teaching on, uh, I don't know, like High Priestess, what shape does that take for teaching somebody how to become their High Priestess? It's likely gonna be a triangle 'cause it's an ascension model, and it helps them go from, you know, this is where they are to let's go into the shadow work to let's talk about, you know, from the inside out, our inner stories, to coming back up to realizing that we are the ultimate creator. So this is interesting because you'll start to see that. The third thing I want you to do is I want you to just sit with it, draw the shape, and don't try and give it too much meaning straight away. But research shapes, how they want to communicate to people, why they exist, how it is that we, as ultimate communicators and sharers of knowledge, which ones suit us best This is fun. And I just think, like, if... Yeah, it's don't leave this out of the equation. It will help you create better stories. It will help you sell better. It will help you feel more confident because it's so visual. It's fun when you see it in this way. Honestly, it's a huge part of what I do every single day myself. It's sort of a strange episode for me to record, only because it's so innate, where it's like, "Oh my gosh," like, 'cause my clients were like, "You should do an episode on shapes." And I'm like, "This is strange." But anyway, I hope that it's landed well, because I do think it's one of those secret weapon things that people don't think about very much, and it's, like, a little outside of the usual, you know, get on Instagram and talk, talk, talk, or create carousels and all the things. This is, if you find it, you understand where your work actually wants to live. Everything clicks a lot faster. So this is the perspective I wanted to give you. I wanted to share that, that your work has a shape. Most people have inherited theirs and have never checked whether it actually fits, like me 18 months later, but I'm glad that I had that epiphany. And the wrong shape is often the reason why your teaching feels a little muddy, why it doesn't quite feel like it's clicking or connecting. So it's worthwhile. Go and find yours. Draw the thing badly. Let it be a little messy. It will come. But I hope that this has helped you. Let me know. Come over to Instagram. Let me know what your shape is. And otherwise, I will see you in the next one. Big kisses, guys. Bye.