Saying It Simply, But How?
You're trying to write a post for social media. You’re struggling to cram everything you do into a paragraph. Saying it simply is not something you believe to be an option. So, what should you talk about first? Imposter syndrome? Anxiety? Confidence?
You try to think about your ideal client - what problem do they have? You think about the clients you’ve spoken to this week. Trouble is, they all came to you for different things, and they all have different goals. So how do you articulate your coaching skills when saying it simply doesn't come naturally?
You're Sabotaging Your Messaging
Are you any of these coaches?
You’re not a career coach exactly but what you do does help people with their careers.
You’re not a lifestyle coach but everything you help your clients with impacts their lifestyle.
You’re a health coach but you don’t put everyone on a diet (unless they need help with nutrition) and not everyone wants to lose weight unless they do want to lose weight and you can help them with that.
You work with leaders... but it's more than leadership coaching, it's about transformation and... you use a framework that combines neuroscience with... actually, it depends on the client really... I guess you could say you help people unlock their potential.
By the time you’ve finished your rambling explanation, you hate what you’ve written and don’t bother posting it.
Sound familiar?
This isn't your fault.
The skills that make you a great coach are sabotaging your messaging
Think about what you were trained to do as a coach:
- Hold complexity and nuance
- Adapt your approach to each individual client
- Ask open questions rather than give answers
- Resist the urge to oversimplify
- See the whole person, not just the presenting problem
- Stay curious about what's really going on beneath the surface
These are brilliant coaching skills. They're why your clients get transformation. They're why you're good at what you do.
But they're an absolute ballache when it comes to explaining what you do.
Because the skills that make you excellent in the coaching room, your adaptability, nuance, customisation and complexity are the exact opposite of what you need for clear messaging.
A solicitor can say "I defend people in criminal court." Simple. Clear. Done.
An accountant can say "I help people stay on top of their business finances." Easy.
But a coach? You help people with... everything? Nothing specific? It depends on who walks through the door. Saying it simply seems to be impossible.
The curse of competence
The better you are at coaching, the harder it becomes to explain. How annoying.
When you're early in your coaching career, you might have said "I'm a life coach" or "I help people achieve their goals." It was simple (if generic).
But now? After five years, ten years, hundreds of client hours? You've seen how complex transformation actually is. You know it's never just about time management or confidence or leadership, it's always deeper, more nuanced, more interconnected than that.
So when someone asks what you do, your brain does this:
“Well, I can't say leadership coaching because that sounds too narrow, and yesterday's client came to me for leadership but we actually worked on their relationship with their father, and the client before that thought they needed help with team dynamics but really it was about their own fear of conflict, and I use ACT and parts work and somatic awareness and….."
Your skills and experience have made you acutely aware of all the things you CAN'T say. All the oversimplifications that would be technically inaccurate.
So instead of saying it simply, you end up saying nothing clearly at all.
Why “I’m a transformational leadership coach” means nothing
Nobody wakes up in the morning and thinks "I need a transformational leadership coach."
They wake up thinking:
"I'm exhausted from managing difficult team dynamics"
"I keep getting passed over for promotion"
"I dread going into the office"
"My team doesn't respect me"
”I need to find a coach for a difficult board member”
"I have no idea how to give difficult feedback"
These are the actual thoughts your ideal clients are having. These are the searches they're typing into Google. These are the conversations they're having with their husbands or friends over wine.
But when they land on your website and see "I help leaders unlock their full potential through transformational coaching frameworks," their brain goes: "Okay, but does that mean you can help me with my problem?"
They don't know. So they leave.
Not because you're not good enough. Not because they don't need what you offer. But because they couldn't connect their actual, specific, 3am worry to your vague, professional-sounding description.
The moment that it finally clicked
After years of watching brilliant coaches struggle with this exact problem, I created a process that cuts through the waffle, the brain mess and the complexity. Saying it Simply.
It's built around two deceptively simple questions:
1. Who do I help?
Not "leaders" or "professionals" or "high-achievers." Who SPECIFICALLY?
Are they newly promoted managers drowning in team drama? Mid-career professionals stuck in jobs they've outgrown? Senior executives who can't switch off? Women returning to work after maternity leave?
The more specific you get, the easier it becomes for the right people to recognise themselves.
2. What do I help them do?
Not "transform" or "unlock potential" or "achieve their goals."
What specific change happens? What shifts from their before state to their after state?
Do they go from dreading difficult conversations to handling them confidently? From working 60-hour weeks to leaving at 5pm guilt-free? From being overlooked to getting promoted?
When you can answer these two questions with specificity, everything else falls into place.
What happens when you finally get clear
I worked with a coach who'd been in business for seven years. Brilliant at what she did. Terrible at explaining it.
Her website said: "I provide executive coaching for leaders seeking to elevate their impact and create meaningful change in their organisations."
After working through the framework, she landed on: "I help newly promoted directors stop drowning in operational work so they can actually lead strategically."
Same coach. Same skills. Same transformation for clients.
But suddenly, her ideal clients could see themselves in her words.
Within six weeks, she'd signed three new clients at £8K each. People who'd been following her for months but hadn't understood she was the solution to their specific problem.
The clarity didn't just make her easier to find, it also made her easier to buy from.
Saying it Simply - Clear Messaging
This isn’t about dumbing down your work, cutting out groups of ideal clients or choosing a niche
I know what you might be thinking: "But my work IS complex. I don't want to oversimplify what I do."
I get it. And I'm not asking you to.
Clear messaging isn't about pretending your work is simple. It's about making your brilliance accessible.
Think of it like a restaurant menu. The description "Pan-seared sea bass with saffron cream, heritage tomatoes, and samphire" doesn't capture the years of culinary training, the complexity of techniques, or the nuance of flavor balancing that went into creating that dish.
But it tells you enough to know if you want to order it.
Your messaging needs to do the same thing. It doesn't need to explain your entire methodology, your framework, your training, or the depth of transformation you facilitate.
It just needs to help the right people know they're in the right place.
The cost of messy messaging
Every day you can't clearly articulate what you do is a day you're making it harder for ideal clients to find you.
Those potential clients aren't stupid. They're not failing to "get it." They're busy, overwhelmed, and scrolling through dozens of coaches who all sound vaguely similar.
If they can't immediately understand how you help people like them with problems like theirs, they move on. Not because you're not the right coach but because they couldn't tell that you were.
Meanwhile, you're:
- Writing pages and pages of content that doesn't land
- Having discovery calls with people who aren't the right fit and don’t have any money
- Feeling frustrated that your marketing isn't working
- Watching coaches with less experience sign clients more easily
- Wondering if maybe you should just give up on growing your practice
None of that is because you're not good enough.
It's because nobody gave you a simple way to translate your expertise into clear, compelling messaging.
You don’t need to be a writer
In eight years of teaching coaches how to articulate their work none of them were professional writers. In fact 50% loved writing but the other 50% started our first conversation with “I’m not a writer”.
But by the end of our time working together every single one of them could get clear.
You don't need to be Brené Brown, Mel Robbins or Simon Sinek. You don't need to craft perfect metaphors or tell cinematic stories.
You just need a structured way to think about who you help and what you help them do.
That's what I built, Saying It Simply, to do.
It's not a writing course. It's not about storytelling techniques or copywriting formulas or content creation strategies.
It's a framework that helps you answer those two fundamental questions and then use those answers across everything you do.
Your LinkedIn bio. Your website homepage. Your discovery calls. Your networking introductions. Your email signatures.
When you have clarity, everything else gets easier.
The starting point
If you've been coaching for a while and you still stumble when someone asks what you do, you're not a bad coach.
You're just using the wrong framework.
The complexity you hold as a coach is a gift in the coaching room. But it's a liability in your marketing.
Saying It Simply is about building a bridge between your expertise and your ideal client's understanding.
When you can describe your offer simply and clearly, you can sell it.
When you can't? You stay brilliant, busy, and broke.
And you deserve better than that.
If you’d like to finally be able to articulate what you do in a way that makes ideal clients say "oh, I need that" check out Saying It Simply.
Thank you to Lisa from Wonderful World of Websites for sharing her platform for me to reach out to her followers about my Saying it Simply course.
About the Author
Clair Stevenson is a copywriter and marketing mentor who specialises in helping coaches and consultants articulate their expertise clearly. After eight years of watching brilliant coaches struggle to explain what they do, she created Saying It Simply, a framework that helps service-based business owners finally answer the question "so what do you do?" without rambling. When she's not helping coaches claim their voice she’s upsetting men on LinkedIn for shits and giggles. Connect with her on LinkedIn