A business coach spends 28 minutes untangling why a client's five rewrites of his offer all failed the same way: they were all still too vague to sell.
Posted
3 days ago
Duration
Format
Interview
sincere
Views
3K
44 likes
57 · 43
Big Idea
The argument in one line.
Reluctance to pick one specific, sellable offer isn't a passion problem, it's a mastery problem, because staying broad lets you avoid the discomfort of going deep enough in one area to actually get good at it.
Who This Is For
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
You've rewritten your coaching or service offer multiple times and still can't say in one sentence what you sell.
You have a broad passion (helping people, personal growth, 'finding purpose') you're struggling to turn into something sellable.
You're doing everything except signing clients: refining positioning, building backend tools, taking more courses.
You're afraid that choosing one specific offer means permanently closing every other door.
SKIP IF…
You already have a specific, sellable offer and are optimizing conversion, not finding your niche.
You're looking for ad copy or funnel tactics rather than offer-positioning strategy.
TL;DR
The full version, fast.
A client on a coaching call admits he's rewritten his offer five times and still can't describe a clear finish line for who he helps. The coach argues that refusing to get specific isn't passion, it's avoidance: going broad lets you dodge the mastery that specificity forces on you. He shows how successful coaches sell a narrow, concrete promise (career coaching, business coaching) as a Trojan horse for the broader transformation they actually deliver (life coaching). The fix is tactical: separate the mechanism ('find your purpose') from the offer (the finish line someone can point to and say you got them there), then write out who the client is, what their dream outcome is, and where they're stuck right now.
Free for members
Chat with this breakdown — free.
Sign in and you get 23 free chat messages on us — ask for the hook, quote a framework, find the exact transcript moment, generate a markdown action plan. Bring your own key when you want unlimited.
Tom frames the clip for YouTube: a coaching call with a client stuck on turning a vague passion into a sellable offer.
00:57 – 05:06
02 · Aaron's situation
Aaron explains he's changed his offer five times, stays busy with backend work instead of signing clients, and describes his vague 'vision to reality roadmap' life-coaching idea.
05:08 – 07:20
03 · The real diagnosis: mastery, not passion
Tom argues that refusing to get specific is a symptom of avoiding mastery, not a lack of direction, and that mastery is the feeling Aaron is actually chasing.
07:22 – 09:40
04 · The Trojan horse pattern
Tom explains how he and others succeed by selling a narrow, specific offer (career coaching, business coaching) while delivering a broader transformation underneath it.
09:41 – 11:28
05 · Examples: Tony Robbins, John Demartini, a career-coach friend
Tom gives examples of people who sell a narrow promise and deliver life coaching, including a friend who struggled as a generic life coach until he repositioned as a career coach.
11:29 – 13:08
06 · Pick one, even by a thin margin
Tom tells Aaron to stop waiting for a passion-driven sign and just choose one direction by a small preference, since the decision itself is what starts development.
13:09 – 15:05
07 · 'Find your purpose' is not an offer
Tom draws a diagram distinguishing the mechanism (find your purpose) from the offer (a concrete finish line), since a mechanism alone can't be sold.
15:06 – 16:40
08 · The finish line framework
Using his own Ironman story, Tom illustrates that the mechanism is the grueling process while the offer is the specific, namable achievement someone is paying for.
16:52 – 17:14
09 · Mid-roll CTA
Tom pitches the Time To Build coaching program where this live call is recorded.
17:16 – 19:09
10 · Specific attracts specific
Tom explains that a vague offer attracts vague, directionless clients, while a specific finish line aligns both coach and client on what success looks like.
19:13 – 22:46
11 · The fear of choosing is false
Tom reframes the fear that picking a niche closes every other door, arguing that choosing is what starts development and businesses change dramatically over time anyway.
22:47 – 24:12
12 · Tom's own decision story
Tom shares that he walked away from a $30-50k/month digital products business in 2022 to build an education business that made just $6,000 in its first workshop.
24:12 – 26:27
13 · Tactical homework
Tom gives Aaron a three-question framework to answer after the call: who is this person, what's their dream outcome, and where are they stuck right now.
26:29 – 28:39
14 · Close and CTA
Tom encourages the audience not to feel embarrassed bringing unfinished problems to coaching calls, then pitches the next video on finding a winning digital product idea.
Atomic Insights
Lines worth screenshotting.
Reluctance to be specific about your offer is usually a symptom of avoiding mastery, not a sign of having too many passions.
Staying broad lets you chase the feeling of being needed without ever going deep enough in one area to get good at it.
A specific offer is often a Trojan horse: sell career coaching, deliver life coaching, because the narrow promise is what people will actually buy.
If the best entrepreneur in the world couldn't turn your offer into a single ad that gets someone to say yes, the offer is too vague.
Choosing one offer doesn't close doors permanently. It's a decision you can revisit in six months once the business has actually moved.
A mechanism ('find your purpose') is not an offer. The offer is the finish line someone can point to and say you got them there.
Vague offers attract vague clients, and vague clients are exhausting to work with because neither side knows what success looks like.
The tactical fix for a vague offer is three questions in order: who is this person, what's their dream outcome, and where are they stuck right now.
Writing out a client avatar in stream-of-consciousness detail is valuable for the clarity it forces while writing, not for the document it produces afterward.
A business you build today is rarely your last business, so over-optimizing your first offer for where you want to end up wastes time you could spend getting specific now.
Takeaway
Vagueness is avoidance, not passion
OFFER CLARITY
An offer you can't fit into a single ad isn't broad because you love too many things, it's broad because specificity forces you to develop mastery you've been avoiding.
02Aaron's situation
Staying busy with backend work instead of signing clients is a common way people avoid committing to one specific offer.
03The real diagnosis: mastery, not passion
Reluctance to be specific about your offer is usually a symptom of avoiding mastery, not a sign of having too many passions.
Staying broad lets you chase the feeling of being needed without going deep enough in one area to actually get good at it.
04The Trojan horse pattern
A specific offer is often a Trojan horse: sell career coaching, deliver life coaching, because the narrow promise is what people will actually buy.
05Examples: Tony Robbins, John Demartini, a career-coach friend
Real-world examples like Tony Robbins (state change) and John Demartini (trauma recovery) show the same pattern: a narrow sellable promise wrapping a broader transformation.
06Pick one, even by a thin margin
Pick one direction even by a thin margin instead of waiting for a passion-driven sign, since the decision itself is what starts development.
If the best entrepreneur in the world couldn't turn your offer into a single ad that gets someone to say yes, the offer is too vague.
07'Find your purpose' is not an offer
A mechanism like 'find your purpose' is not an offer. The offer is the finish line someone can point to and say you got them there.
10Specific attracts specific
Vague offers attract vague clients, and vague clients are exhausting to work with because neither side knows what success looks like.
11The fear of choosing is false
Choosing a niche doesn't close doors permanently. It's a decision you can revisit in six months once the business has actually moved.
A business you build today is rarely your last business, so don't over-optimize your first offer for where you eventually want to end up.
13Tactical homework
The tactical fix for a vague offer is three questions in order: who is this person, what's their dream outcome, and where are they stuck right now.
Write the client avatar in raw stream-of-consciousness detail. The clarity comes from the act of writing it, not from having the document afterward.
Glossary
Terms worth knowing.
Trojan horse offer
A narrow, concrete offer (like career coaching) that's easy to sell, used to deliver a broader transformation (like life coaching) the buyer wouldn't have paid for directly.
Finish line
The specific, nameable result a client can point to and say you helped them achieve it, as opposed to the vague process or mechanism used to get there.
See every word as it's spoken — crank it to 2× and still catch all of it. The same dual-channel trick behind Amazon's Kindle + Audible.
17px
metaphoranalogystory
So today's YouTube video that you're about to watch is actually a coaching clip from Inside Time to Build. I had a conversation with a client called Aaron who's been struggling with taking his vague passion for what he does and his genuine desire to help people and turn it into an offer that will actually sell. And so if you are someone who's always kind of struggled with being specific and coming up with a specific offer because it feels like you're shutting the door on all the other things that you're interested in, I think this video will seriously help you because we unpack basically why people do that and then how aaron can actually go and create an offer that is specific enough to sell while still allowing him to do all the things that he actually wants to do and serve the passion that he has for helping people so if you watch the rest of this clip i think it'll be extremely valuable for you aaron what's up dude going on not too much i've been in time to build for quite a few months now and i've been
picking around it no different lessons and whatnot i think this is our first face -to -face so you've been lurking i've been lurking yeah this is my first time on a live call for sure um live q a so yeah i feel like i'm just like stuck and i think i just need a kick in the ass okay if i'm being honest i can do that i feel like since i've joined the program i've probably changed my positioning and my offer five times i'm just doing a lot of work on like back end stuff just staying busy doing like everything by refining my offer my philosophy you know all this different stuff basically anything besides just signing clients yeah it's honestly like it's very normal so don't feel yeah yeah like very very normal yeah and that's the thing is i i actually that's why i haven't came on any of these q a's or hot seats yet because i'm like i feel like i should be able to figure this out, you know, and this was coming on today is like hopefully someone can at least just relate to where I'm at and And get help from this too.
So Yeah, I feel like I just need help Getting out of like just preparation mode and just like choose a fucking direction and just for the next like One to three months and just put my head down and commit to it. Mm -hmm. And I think the irony is that like my offer is like this is what i want to help people with more so like just in their life yeah it's just like setting a direction and then i want to help them like break it down into actions to move forward in it and i feel like i've done well with that in every area of my life except for when it comes to just like my business yeah it's that one wall that i just keep smashing my head against yeah so talk talk to me about what do you what do you help people with what's the what's the the value what's the finish line of working directly with you so this is one thing i was relating with the last guy as well it's like i find with my offer because it's not like you know get to 10k a month or get to this thing is i've struggled so much with breaking it down into like a tangible
um and so i like things that i think of as like let's say by the end of six months it's like you have a clear next direction for where you're headed or you have like a clear life vision um i think just like what inspires me to even just coaching to begin with is like yeah just the the transformation i've gone through in my own life of just um not to go like really deep into this but like grew up like very small town very close -minded um and just went through a bunch of shit that opened my eyes to a bigger perspective and then recently i'm like i've over the past five years um being in coaching i've invested like 70k into coaching programs worked on myself transformed my life now i'm like traveling the world like i have a fucking wicked life and i just want to help other people kind of break out of their own limiting paradigms and create a vision and just go for it but i'm like how but that's where i get stuck it's like well where do i what's the promise like how do you put that into a promise yep so that's where i think that i'm stuck okay and so i'm like i'm working with one paid client right now a couple friends for free i'm like building an app on the back end which i call like my vision to reality roadmap which is like creating the vision breaking it down into
one -year goals 90 30 weekly daily uh just like kind of reverse engineering a vision into like what do you what do you do today yeah and then i just want to do like one -on -one coaching uh to just to support people with accountability and and uh overcoming resistance and all of that so to some degree it's life coaching yeah yeah yeah okay so There's a few things that I've experienced over the last 10 years and specifically over the last four years with helping people is I think offer, I'll call it a reluctancy to be specific is a symptom of a lack of, and I'm not saying this in a way to be.
critical but is a symptom of a lack of mastery and so you're letting yourself kind of play buffet with what you help people with and that is stopping you from developing mastery and mastery is the feeling that you're actually chasing and so that that like hunger to deliver a value that like insatiable desire to be of service to people And that feeling of fulfillment that you're chasing with that, it seems like you genuinely want to help people.
That's a symptom of mastery, not a symptom of getting people results. And so if you developed insane mastery in one specific area, that's the actual feeling you're looking for. And so I felt to a large degree, the same feeling that you had many years ago when I was kind of, and I'm not calling you, I'm not calling.
describing you as not having the ability to coach people what I'm saying is you're not giving yourself the ability to develop mastery and so back when I started I had this feeling of like oh I want to do a bit of this and I'll help people with this and maybe help them get clients and sell digital products and make content online and do all these different things and by doing that I wasn't going deep in one particular area whereas the moment I made a decision and it is just the decision there's no like magic moment where it's going to reveal itself and suddenly you're going to have a client and all this butterflies and rainbows and it feels amazing.
It's actually just going to be a decision you make in one moment and go, I'm going to do this. The beautiful part about that decision is then that gives you the ability to put your blinders on and focus, develop mastery. And then ironically, by helping people achieve results significantly in one area, you by proxy help them in every other area of their life.
And so let's say as an example, we focus on Like career change. Like maybe your thing is career change.
You're in one career. You've got people who are kind of stuck. Maybe they're professionals.
They've always kind of done one particular thing. They, you know, went to university and became a doctor. They went to university and they become an accountant.
And now they want to try and do something different. Like you've done yourself. And so you become a career coach.
If you help someone find a more fulfilling career, make more money and have more freedom, that is by proxy all of the other things that you're trying to help them achieve at the moment. But because you got specific, you help them better. And so if I help someone build a $20 ,000 a month online business or a $10 ,000 a month or $50 ,000 a month or $100 ,000 a month online business, the symptoms or the byproducts of the side effects of that result is probably more freedom, probably more fulfillment.
They're probably going to feel happier as a result of more freedom and more fulfillment. And suddenly I'm like a life coach disguised as a business coach. Does that make sense?
I have a friend of mine and I've told this story before, but I have a friend of mine who was a corporate executive and at like 32 or 33 years old, he just was like, I'm done. I want to pivot. I love life coaching.
He's always been into self -help. And so he decided I'm going to become a life coach. And for two years, he desperately struggled to sell clients.
He couldn't do it. It was like trying to sell. a little bit of everything to everyone.
And then what he realized is because he was a corporate executive, he had an enormous amount of experience in like recruiting and hiring and finding new roles and transitioning careers and all that sort of stuff. And so he launched his life coaching as career coaching and the business took off. But the funny thing is, is his offer was just a Trojan horse to give people life coaching because career coaching is actually just.
Life coaching, right? If you help someone be more confident, be more charismatic, present better, interview better, as a result, they're going to get a better career. And as a result, they're going to make more money.
And so he just sold career coaching and then delivered life coaching. Tony Robbins sells state change and delivers life coaching. John Demartini sells trauma recovery and delivers life coaching.
These people just sell an offer that's a Trojan horse. a singular thing, and then they deliver whatever they want. I'm life coaching you more right now than I am business coaching you.
And that's a result of the Trojan horse that is build a $10 ,000 a month online education business. And so for you, I actually think this is more a question of you need to choose, like pick one thing that you feel most. look, it's probably going to be by a razor thin margin.
You might be like, I slightly prefer this than something else. It's not going to be, again, passion. I think passion has kind of fucked a lot of people up.
I think there's this idea of like passion and fulfillment where everyone's like, it's going to be this amazing moment where I realize, oh, the stars aligned and this thing's perfect for me. It's not. I'm like the most accidental business coach of all time.
I was selling digital products and running a video production company. And now I'm a business coach. I didn't expect to be here.
But I just said yes to certain things and got specific and then now six years later, here we are. And so can you pick one and hone in on that one thing, run it through the same offer framework we just talked about of singular, measurable, highly desirable and pre -existing and then just go for broke in that one area? And it can be anything.
It could be a relationships program. It could be a business program. It could be a career coaching program.
It could be a whatever. But try to fight. The allure of vague is suffocating your potential because you sound like a smart guy.
But if you're trying to sell an offer that is, Man, the best entrepreneur in the world couldn't sell something super vague. It's going to be very difficult to do.
Even back to what we spoke about with Dave, right? Could you put your offer into a meta ad and get someone to say yes? If you can't, then you're too vague.
Yeah, no, I totally hear what you're saying. That's been my issue that I've... Just from day one.
And I think that's why it's been so hard to just, just to really commit and take action on. Cause it's just like, I'm always like, what is, what is my thing? I'd be curious of your thoughts on like, is it still too vague on like the thing that I'm most passionate about is like, you could say building, I don't like the term like finding purpose.
Cause it's like, you know, you're going to trip and find it under a rock kind of thing, like building, building purpose. Like, um, I think the biggest book that like changed my life was man's search for meaning by Viktor Frankl and like that whole, um, philosophy of, of finding purpose.
And, and I feel like that's what I've always wanted to help people with, but I'm like, that's the whole thing. Like when I go on Instagram, like, Hey, I'm going to help you find your purpose. And that's, that's just kind of where I've stuck.
Yeah. So it's like, I wanted like my part like that to be like embedded into the thing. Yeah.
So I'm curious, um, so yeah what you think of that find your purpose i don't to be honest if you built if you built a kick -ass framework that helped people find their purpose this is great but this like this is genuinely if i can color this in And draw this.
This is a mechanism.
Like the mechanism that helps people get a result is find your purpose. We now just need to figure out what the offer is. And so I have a friend of mine who sells a program.
He's probably the most successful vague seller I've... I know personally, he sells a program that helps you build modern freedom. That's his whole program.
He helps you build modern freedom. But what he actually delivers is wealth management, business coaching, and like building a brand online. And so his version of modern freedom.
is sold through achieving those things. And he has a bunch of other things around mental freedom and all that sort of stuff. But his idea of selling modern freedom is the mechanism.
The actual offer is build an offer, sell online, build a brand, et cetera, et cetera. And so I'm okay with find your purpose. If you're deeply passionate about, and it sounds like you are, if you're deeply passionate about helping people find purpose in their life, that's okay, but that's not an offer.
Hence why you feel that feeling of like, I'm going to help you find your purpose on Instagram is not a good enough offer. And so again, it's like a sleight of hand, right? You've got like, you need your Trojan horse here.
And as they go to grab it, you go, actually, you want this. And so again, once someone is paying for time to build, I will help you in any way that I possibly can. Like that includes.
life coaching. That includes a kick in the ass. That includes refining your offer.
That includes critiquing your content. I will help in whatever way I can. That's who I am, mate.
Second biggest purpose in life is being a teacher. That's something I value very highly, but I'm not going to sell Tom Nosky will help you in whatever area you want. You know what I mean?
And so for your situation, find your purpose. I'm actually totally okay with that being your mechanism, but it's not an offer. And so you need to figure out what's the offer that if you delivered, like let's frame it like this.
If this is the finish line that someone's going to achieve over here, you need to help them achieve this finish line. What does that finish line look like if the mechanism to help them achieve it is finding purpose? So the purpose is the vehicle that's going to get them to achieving this finish line.
The finish line is what you sell. As an example, right? I've completed a few Ironmans.
The Ironman finish line is Tom Nosky, you are an Ironman and a photo of me finishing the Ironman. The mechanism is 30 -hour training weeks, a coach, eating more food than you possibly felt like you could eat, never having weekends, losing your social life for two years straight. Like sitting on a bike for seven hours on a weekend, running for three hours on a Sunday.
Like that's the mechanism. But the finish line is Tom Nosky, you are an Ironman and a photo of me crossing the finish line. right and so the same thing here is like find your purpose what's the finish line?
What's the accomplishment that they can look at and go, I achieved this because of Aaron. Hey, if you're enjoying this clip and you want to be in these calls every single week that we do with clients, so this conversation that I'm having back and forth with Aaron, there'll be a link in the top line of the description where you can join Time To Build.
This is a low ticket coaching program that helps you go and turn what you know into an offer you can sell to the audience you already have. So click the button below, check it out. If it sounds like it's for you, I'll see you on the next call.
Yeah. Yeah. Like I had a conversation the other day with someone who was like, I would just say ideal client who I'd want to work with.
And she basically like, she's like, I have, I'm just spinning in circles. I've got like 10 different things I could pick right now. I just need someone to like help me pick one thing and then just hold me accountable to it and, and help me through that.
And so like, that's like, that's what I want to be for that person is to be able to like help. Yeah. But it's like, But vague will attract vague.
And so I still have people like yourself who are struggling to be specific from a very specific offer. And so you have to be specific and then you will empower yourself to be that person for other people. If you tell people, I'm just going to be your accountability buddy, you're going to have a bunch of people who desperately need accountability buddies and you're going to have a really bad time.
Whereas if you have a specific offer and you go, I'm going to help you cross this finish line, it's then significantly easier for you to be the person you want to be for that person because both of you are aligned on the finish line. Both of you can look at that and go, together you and I are going to fight tooth and fucking nail, blood, sweat, and tears to get to that finish line.
And so that's what empowers someone to go, Aaron's my fucking guy because I know that he's going to help me achieve this thing. Whereas if both of you are kind of coming in with vague, you're going to have a bunch of people that are like, I don't know what to do. And you're going to be sitting there going, I don't know how to help you.
Like I've had clients before who are desperately unsure of themselves. And there's not a lot I can do. Like I can tell them, I can speak to them, I can push them and prod and poke and all that sort of stuff.
But at the end of the day, if they don't take a little bit of self -responsibility. I can't do anything about that. And I think it's, I don't think, I know it starts with your offer.
It starts with what do you say on the page that gets someone to buy? Because that's the filter that then gets them on the same page as you. You almost want to think like you're putting something out into the world to attract the people that you want to work with, not they want to work with you.
Yeah.
Yeah, I think that's my focus has just been too much on, we'll say, the mechanism rather than the end result. Can I say one more thing? I think there's a huge amount of fear that so many of you have around choosing because I think you think it's like I choose and then it's like the door closes perpetually forever.
And it's just blatantly untrue. Like if I've experienced anything in my own career, it's that you pick and then development starts. The moment you pick is actually the first day of the rest of your business career.
And then everything continually changes over time. Like I've gone back on decisions I made six months ago and completely changed how I'm doing business. From where we are today to where we'll be in six months, we'll be a completely different business again.
And I think there's this fear that people have where they're worried about choosing because they think it's like, okay, I get to, I lose every door I had previously. But that's just, it's just untrue. Like, I think when I first started, I was worried that what if I choose and then I lose these parts of myself because it's not involved in the business that I have.
But ironically, by choosing, it's empowered me to build a business that can then give me the freedom to do those things anyway. I got this piece of advice.
What's so funny is these people are son and parent. But I got this piece of advice from two people. The first one I was speaking to, he's a YouTuber, big YouTuber, but very niche, like extremely niched.
And he runs a company off the back of that YouTube channel. And he has multiple other hobbies, like a bunch of other things that he's really passionate about, like jujitsu. all that sort of stuff.
And I asked him one day, very naively, like eight years ago, I was like, why don't you also have like a YouTube channel for this and a business for this? And like, why don't you include all of these things in your personal brand and all that sort of stuff? And he's like, Tom, this channel is my cash cow that gives me the freedom to go fuck you and do whatever I want with the rest of my time.
And so I will keep being specific here. So I then have the freedom and capacity to do whatever I want when I leave it. And ironically, his parent gave me the advice, like very, very successful entrepreneur.
And I spoke to this person and I was really worried about like the trajectory of my business. I was like, oh, I don't know how this business is going to turn me into like a, you know, how's it going to make me hundreds of millions of dollars and like help me speak on stages and all that sort of stuff. And this person, again, gave me similar advice.
They were like, Tom, your current business is almost never your last business. And so worrying about how your current business is going to get you to where you want to be is a complete waste of time and energy.
You'd be so much better off maximizing what you can do right now with this business. So you then have the options in the future to choose what you want to do. And so for you, it sounds like this fear, Aaron, is that you don't want to choose because it means you lose parts of yourself.
Maybe you don't want to neglect the travel side of your business because then you lose the travel side or you don't want to neglect the life coaching side because you're worried about losing that or you don't want to neglect the business or the social or whatever because you'll lose that. But that's not true. You choose them.
or choose one. And then that opens up the possibilities to re -choose in the future. But until you choose, you will continue to be stuck in this place of, I don't know what to do.
And so it is just like, it's not like this, Matt, it's just a decision. Like literally after this call, you could put them out all on a piece of paper and just blind go circle one and go, Oh, I guess I'm spending the next 12 months doing that. And then that would be a better decision than continuing to worry about it because there won't be any signal.
There won't be any like stars aligning from the universe or whatever. Like maybe some of you, maybe if you're a little bit more spiritual, you might feel a little bit of that, but there won't be. It'll just be a moment where you make the decision and then the rest will be history.
Like I just made the decision in 2022 when I was selling digital products and still doing some client work. And then I ran a workshop and I was like, I really like teaching. And I made a decision.
I stopped selling the digital products that were making me $30 ,000, $40 ,000, $50 ,000 a month. I stopped doing client work because I knew I didn't have the time. And I built an education business.
It wasn't this amazing moment. I think the first workshop literally made like $6 ,000. Like it wasn't like this.
It wasn't like I blew up. It's like the fallacy of people think I'll wait until one of them succeeds and then I'll pick that one. Guess what?
They're all going to continue to fail because you fail to pick.
Anyway, all of that to say, I think you just need to make a decision more so than actually feel like the decision is going to be made for you.
Yeah, I'll sit with it and then I'll put something in the ask Tom space. I'll give you a little checklist. Let's make this tactical to finish.
I want you to answer after this call, I want you to answer who. So the first question you're going to answer is who is this person that you're going to work with? And I want you to be as granular and detailed as humanly possible, like name, age, demographic, what they do in their spare time, how much money they make, what job they work, what pains they feel, what's their biggest struggle, like write and don't let Claude do this, write this in a Google doc, just...
brain dump stream of consciousness. Because the exercise itself is what will bring the clarity. It's not actually having this document handy later.
It's just you writing from their perspective. You should know this person better than you know yourself. So who?
Then I want you to think, what's the finish line? So where do I want to help someone get to? What's the dream outcome for this person?
And so who are they? Dream outcome. And then I want you to think, where are they now?
So who? What? Where?
Who are they? What do they want to achieve? What's the dream outcome?
And then where are they now? So this is like, what's the painful experience that they're in right now that's stopping them from starting or achieving or getting to this dream outcome? And again, the point of this exercise is not so you have these documents handy.
It's just stream of consciousness because by the time you've written a thousand words on who this person is, it's so much easier to then go, oh, the picture of where they want to get to is shaping itself on the page for me. You got to trust me a little bit, but who, what, where, who they are, what they want to achieve, dream outcome, and then where they are right now.
What's the reason? What's the pain? What's the starting position?
The point A to their point B.
Cool. Yeah. I feel like I've done this a million times, but I think I need to go into it more.
I think what I need to figure out more is the specific dream outcome. Yep. get out of bag land and think about it like a finish line there needs to be a point in the fucking ground where they go i crossed it and aaron helped me do it that will help because that's literally your offer all right all the best bro and just while we're here everyone watching this recording guys this is what the fucking hot seats and ask tom space is for like i feel like your your example where you were like i was worried about joining these calls because i felt like i had to bring something first That's unfortunately a pain point that I think so many people inside time to build a feeling they're like, in fact, like guys, I'm the last person who's going to judge you because I've been in all of your shoes.
And so there is nothing you could bring me that I'd be like, you know what I mean? Like, I'm never going to judge it. Like, that's what we're here for.
I'm trying to like, this is what I like genuinely for a moment. I need to make this crystal clear. There is nothing in my career.
I enjoy more than this. The conversation we've just had for the last 10 minutes, this is why I do what I do. And so if any of you at any point are like, I want to bring something to Tom and I feel embarrassed, I want you to fight that experience and fight that feeling and know that I'm more excited about solving your problems than you are about solving your problems.
If at any point you're feeling embarrassed or feeling concerned, or you're like, I feel like I need to have achieved something first before I joined the call or I asked in the Tom space, please fight that feeling because that's antithetical to my purpose. And so selfishly, I want you to join these calls.
Yeah, I got them blocked in now. I'm like, I got to stop just fucking hiding in the corner trying to figure this out. Good.
Well, that's what you fucking joined for. That's what I'm here for. You know what I mean?
It's like I've said this so many times. I'm your coach, not your mom. I can't make you show up to class.
And so until you guys feel empowered and excited to show up and bring your problems, no matter how embarrassed you feel about them. You know what's really boring? When someone comes here and they go, hey, I've got this, this, and this, and I give them a one -word answer and send them on their way.
That's not exciting. It's fun. I like when people are confident, but that's not what I'm here for.
You know what I mean? That's what the lessons are here for. That's what the tools are here for.
I'm here to help you get out of a rut. I appreciate it. Rock and roll, dude.
If you enjoyed this video and found it valuable, I think you should watch this one next. It goes through my entire framework for how to come up with winning digital product ideas and how you can start selling to the audience that you already have. So click here, watch that video and I'll see you on the next one.
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
A client named Aaron has rewritten his coaching offer five times and still can't say who it's for or what it does. Over the next half hour, the coach makes the case that the problem was never his passion, it was his refusal to get specific enough to be good at anything.
Add Modern Creator as a preferred source and Google shows you more of our breakdowns in Search, Top Stories, and AI Overviews. It only changes what you see, and you can undo it in your Google settings anytime.
Add to Preferred SourcesOpens your Google source preferences with us pre-loaded. Tick the box and you're done.
Tom Noske breaks down the three-part sequence, holding versus sending, the open home vision, and the Rolex call moment, that took two of his coaching clients from posting weekly to record launches.
A 28-minute case study in why the origin story is the load-bearing structure of every personal brand — delivered by someone who just disclosed his parents were evicted by a sheriff last week.
A 93-minute live coaching call where Laurel Portié argues the real gap isn't the offer, it's positioning, then walks nine live callers through turning a vague process into a priced, objection-proofed offer.
A live channel-and-offer teardown where Ed Lawrence puts five creators' YouTube channels and sales pages through the same pipe, and finds the same blockage each time.