THE PODCAST | 1:1 COACHING | INSTAGRAM
Are you feeling like the person you show up as online doesn’t fully reflect who you are in real life? In this coaching session, I sit down with Lara Badiali, an Instagram and business strategist to help her uncover the disconnect between her online and offline presence. Together, we unpack her journey to authentically communicate her confidence and expertise while finding the balance between being seen as both confident and approachable.
Where Lara wants to find growth
Lara explains that the energy she gives online is not the same energy she gives offline. When she meets people in person, they tell her how much they love her vibe, but she doesn’t feel she can fully show her personality online. To address this, she experiments with posting whatever comes to her mind in the moment. There is no strategy, no pre-planning, just posting with her heart.
If there is one thing Lara hopes to get out of the session, it’s to get her true voice and energy to come out in the online world and for people to see her as a confident, capable coach who can guide clients toward their goals.
Identifying clients aspirations
Lara identifies her ideal clients as coaches and consultants working in the holistic space who want to build a strong brand on Instagram. While she has the qualifications of being a certified life coach and a doctor in psychology, she struggles with feeling deprived, believing that niching down limits her potential client base. I encourage Lara to see niching down as something of abundance rather than a restriction.
The internal essence of what she wants to deliver to her clients
Lara wants her potential clients to see her as confident, someone who knows their shit, with a little bit of cockiness. She admires coaches who exude confidence and feels she should embody that same energy. However, she feels it’s easier to express this in writing rather than verbally.
How Lara helps her clients
To help Lara prove to her audience that she is an expert in her field, I ask her to give me the top three outcomes she is able to give her clients. She shares that she is able to help them create a strong brand on Instagram, create content that converts and gets people to ask for them, and to overcome internal blocks to help them show up more authentically.
Balancing authenticity and professionalism
While Lara explains that it’s important to show up authentically, she also believes that in order to reach a certain level of success, you need to show up in a way that incorporates other people’s values along with your own. Lara gives the example of if she were to see a coach online who is always in their pajamas, swearing, and words aren’t spelled correctly, she wouldn’t want to work with them. Those things are all appearances, and she believes appearances matter because high-quality branding is important. When she goes to someone’s Instagram, she wants to make sure it’s valuable to her and catches her eye.
This is something Lara struggles to share because she sees many other coaches say the complete opposite. However, she also understands the importance of being direct and honest with her audience about the realities of building a successful online brand. One suggestion I give Lara is to use her stories to share her insights in a way that feels less confrontational and more advisory. Lara agrees that she would prefer to offer constructive feedback rather than sugarcoat the challenges of building a brand.
Working with new vs. experienced coaches
Lara also shares her struggle with deciding if she wants to work with newer coaches or in-person seasoned coaches. On the one hand, newer coaches are a blank canvas, however, they most likely wouldn’t want to pay what she charges. On the other hand, in-person seasoned coaches also need to build an online brand, and they do have the finances to pay her prices.
I suggest to Lara to take the money out of the equation and decide what would be the most fulfilling to her. We talk about the difference between what it could look like to work with a new coach and going on that journey with them vs. the experienced coach who already has an established business. Together, we decide that she is going to work on attracting both. Some days, her content will be geared toward new coaches while other days it will be geared toward experienced ones.
Final Thoughts
This session is a reminder that the journey of authenticity and effective personal branding is as much about internal growth as it is about outward strategy. Embracing your true self online AND offline is key to sustainable growth and connection with your audience.
Connect with Lara:
Instagram: @itsthemodernmuse
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Looking for more? Connect with me on Instagram @stacymusgrave or check out my website stacymusgrave.com.
