How You Relate: Who Are You to Your Clients?

So many coach's websites I view sound like it was written by the same central committee: "Transformational." "Authentic." "Empowering." "Unlock your potential."

But you know those words don't begin to reflect the work you actually do — and the results your clients experience.

So why does your website sound like everyone else's?

Because you're trying to speak to everyone at once.

You widen your language so no prospective client feels excluded. Every problem you might solve, every outcome you might create together, every value that your coaching creates, gets stretched to fit anyone who might possibly hire you.

And that generalizing does exactly what you'd expect. It makes everything vague. Fuzzy. Abstract.

A prospective client reads it and can't picture it, much less put themselves in the picture. There's nothing to grab onto, nothing that feels like it was written for them. No image, no story, no emotional charge.

Just competent-sounding fog.

Here's the fix, and it's not more polish.

It's specificity.

One of the richest places to get specific is how you relate to your clients.

Under the title of coach you play many roles.

One moment you're a nurturer, holding a brave space for growth.

The next, you're a challenger jarring your client out of a comfortable rut.

Then you're a guardian, protecting a new way of being that's barely been born.

Or a rebel, cheering on open revolt against the thinking that's kept your client imprisoned.

Every coach intuitively draws on archetypal patterns of human relating. Together they constitute your coaching style, and it's one of the most concrete, specific things you can name about your practice. Vague words like "empowering" don't tell a prospective client anything. "I'm the provocateur on your side who won't let you stay comfortable," speaks volumes. (You don't even need to name the pattern — just speak from that place.)

Take Danielle, who wanted her brand to convey the depth of her work. We uncovered 4 archetypes that shape her coaching:

Alchemist, creating a transformation in how her clients experience their problems, their world, and themselves.

Nurturer, building warmth and safety for growth.

Realist, cutting through the BS to get real.

Provocateur, challenging assumptions that feel comfortable but impede growth.

Rewriting her copy and leveraging these archetypes — particularly foregrounding the Alchemist — now clarified Danielle's coaching presence.

Soon nearly every prospective client she spoke with became a client. They could now feel the specific relationship she creates before the intro call even started.

Danielle didn't broaden her message. She narrowed it, and it got sharper, not smaller.

So here's a question worth sitting with:

What patterns of relating consistently show up in your coaching?

Now go deeper: How does your client concretely benefit from you showing up that way? What does you showing up that way provide?

Get sharper, not smaller.

Own your badassity.

Dan