Who values your work and who pays for it are often different people

If your marketing feels like it should be working and isn't, look at who you're writing it for.

When I help coaches get clear on who they serve, we use an exercise I call Two Circles. The left circle is your why, the reason you do this work at all. The right circle is your who, the people your work is for. Where the two overlap is your how, the way you bring your why to those people.

Most of the time we spend in that right-hand circle goes on one question. Who would value your work?

It's a good question. I always add a second one. Who could actually pay for it?

Often the answers are different.

A coach who supports people through grief

Picture a coach who works with people after a bereavement. The people she helps value that work more than almost anything she could offer them. Many of them are in no place to go looking for a coach, let alone compare packages and book a call.

The person who pays might be an employer who wants support in place for staff who lose someone. It might be a charity. Those are the people who can say yes to an invoice.

So her marketing has two audiences. It needs to speak with care to the person she helps, and make a clear case to the person who funds the work. It's easy to write everything for the first group and then wonder why nothing sells.

Why this matters more with AI

AI makes it quick to produce marketing. That's useful, and it also means you can produce a lot of the wrong thing very fast. If the only person in your head is the one who values the work, every caption and sales page will be written for them, and the person holding the budget never hears from you.

When you're clear on both, AI becomes far more helpful. You can give it two short descriptions and ask it to help you write for each one, in your own words.

A prompt to try

Copy this into your AI and fill in the brackets.

"I'm a [your role] who helps [who you help] with [what you help them with]. Ask me five questions, one at a time, to work out who values this work most and who is most able to pay for it. When we're done, tell me whether those are the same people. If they're different, draft two short paragraphs about my work, one written for each of them."

Read what comes back slowly. Push back on anything that could describe any coach, and ask for a second version that sounds like you.

Your first move

Before you write another word of marketing, answer both questions on paper. Who values this? Who pays for it? If the names are different, you've got two people to talk to.

Both of them matter. One feels the difference your work makes. The other makes it possible for you to keep doing it.

If you'd like help building this kind of clarity into how you use AI every day, that's what Amplify OS is for. colinscotland.com/amplify-os