When Debbie White says coaches don’t need to be louder or slicker to stand out, she means something that might feel backwards at first. After spending 20 years launching brands like Starbucks and building multiple seven-figure businesses, she’s watched too many coaches try to sound like marketers instead of humans.

We get into the messy reality of finding your voice when you’ve been taught to sound professional. Debbie shares stories from her own clients—like the financial coach whose people said things like “looking at my numbers makes my throat tight” and “I’m terrified to check my credit card balance.” That’s not budget management speak. That’s real human fear, and when you can speak to that, everything changes.

If you’ve ever felt like you’re blending in even though you know you have something unique, this conversation will help you figure out how to show up as yourself in a way that makes it ridiculously easy for the right people to find you.

  • Stop trying to sound like a marketer and start sounding like a human. Because 95% of buying decisions happen in the emotional, subconscious part of our brain where we connect with real people, not polished marketing speak.
  • The math is simple: Would you rather post generic content 20 times that gets ignored, or post one authentic piece that makes your ideal client think “that’s exactly how I feel”?
  • Your “professional mask” isn’t protecting your credibility; it’s making you invisible. When every coach sounds the same, being more of yourself becomes your competitive advantage.
  • Here’s what your clients are really saying: “I’m terrified to look at my numbers. It makes my throat tight.” Stop talking about “budget management” and start speaking to the actual fear keeping them up at night.
  • Think of one person when creating content, not a crowd. You already know how to have conversations—the awkwardness comes from imagining you’re performing for masses instead of talking to a friend.
  • Your uniqueness isn’t just your process, it’s you + your process. Fortune 500 companies spend millions trying to feel human while you’re trying to sound corporate. Do the opposite.
  • The world needs what you have to offer, so get out of your own way and do it messy. Because perfectionism is just fear wearing a business suit.

Read Our Q&A Here:

Debbie: First of all, I want people to realize that to get more clients, you actually don’t want to sound like you’re advertising. You don’t want to sound like a marketer, you want to sound like a human being, because people buy from humans. Sounds simple, but a lot of things being taught out there in the world is very marketing formula-speak, and it’s a huge turn off. Honestly, I use AI all the time. However, most of the stuff generated by AI is very marketing cliche speak as well, and it’s a turn off.

Debbie: You are an incredible example of someone who has a very real, authentic voice, and there’s a polarizing effect. Your listeners know that about you, and the ones that people don’t just love you, they love you or it’s not for me, and that’s actually what you want. You actually want more of yourself in your content, because there’s so much competition, there are so many other financial coaches on social media, that they all do start to sound the same, and then it becomes white noise to your ideal client. It doesn’t mean anything.

We make decisions from a very emotional place. Ninety-five percent of our decisions are actually from a very emotionally based place in our brain, our subconscious, and when we relate with people as humans, being ourselves and interjecting opinions and relating to what people are actually going through and how they talk about it—once you start talking with your audience instead of putting on a suit and sounding professional, then you just blend in with everyone else.

Debbie: First of all, I don’t care what type of coach you are, and I’ve worked with just about every different kind, but even within the realm of financial coaches, you bring something to the table with your background, with the way your brain works, with the way you operate, with your structure, with your process. When you bring all that together and then you add in why you’re even doing this anyway—your purpose—now we’ve got a huge bag of unique traits, aspects, feelings, emotions, that only you have.

What I love to do is help draw that out and say, “Now let’s take this”—and that’s the marketer part—”let’s position who you’re talking to specifically. Maybe it’s a specific demographic. Maybe it’s a certain thing you bring that’s a little different.” All of a sudden you do start to separate from the pack, and you’re like, “Oh, my God, that is my zone of genius. That’s my X factor” that allows you to stand out and start attracting people who say, “Okay, she’s my girl. That’s my guy. That’s the one I want. There’s no one else but her for me,” because now you’re getting into real specifics and a lot more specificity, and that’s what draws people in.

Debbie: Actually, I think it’s a combination. There’s an art to this. I have a very simple process, but basically, we need to start with you as a human first. Because we’re wired to be drawn to humans. Even giant, major Fortune 500 brands, which I have worked with many, they’re all trying to personify their actual brand. They have to work hard at it. And so here we are as a person, and I see people trying to make it look like a big, giant company with no person. They’re spending hundreds of millions of dollars walking around with a talking duck, or whatever they’re doing to personify their brand. Because we buy from humans. We buy from people.

If you start there and realize, “Okay, there’s me as a human person, my why, my purpose. What’s in it for me?” People care about that. I see your purpose in your emails, in your content. I’m drawn to you. You stand out for me. I start to see your beliefs, your passion, your feeling for why you’re doing it. It’s like, “Man, she’s awesome.” Your people love you. Why? If you were just writing bland content about, “Here’s what the market is doing today. Here’s what you should be doing with your finances—let’s talk about balancing your checkbook,” I would be like, “Yeah, whatever. I’m not interested.”

But you bring a human, emotional element into it, and I feel like I know you, and then I feel like I trust you, because you’re allowing me into your world. So you take the person part, and then you take, what if you do have a really amazing, unique process that actually helps me get there faster, better, easier? And then you combine those two—you’re untouchable.

Debbie: The lighthouse effect is all about clarity. When you clarify who is my ideal audience—and that’s who do you love working with? Who loves you? Who do you help get the biggest gains? What lights you up? And then what is unique and different about you? People have all kinds of interesting aspects, experiences, ways of doing things that you’re actually bringing to the table that’s unique. And when you identify that, and you pull it in the circle, for these people, I add this really cool thing, then you’ve got your target audience, your X Factor. That’s part of the lighthouse effect.

The third is your what I call hell yes offer. How do we pull that together? And then it’s not just your process—people really don’t care about the process, but what about the process is a benefit? These steps, everyone has three steps they must take a client through in order to get that promise. And then if you flip the steps into a massive benefit for your specific audience that’s infused with your thing you do really well, but no one else does exactly the way you do, it becomes your signature system. But the messaging of that is written so that it’s specifically to your audience. It’s actually using the words they say—within, I suggest, market research with interviews.

You’re actually pulling all this together and creating this very simple, three-step process that when your ideal audience hears it, they’re like, “I want that, I want that, I want that, oh, hell yes, I want the whole thing.”

Debbie: There’s a concept in marketing where, if you’re just marketing more, but it’s all noise and it’s meaningless and it’s just fluffy, it doesn’t even make sense. Who cares? You could say that over and over again, 20 times a day, and it’s not going to get you a client. If you had the message that was specific, detailed, it hit right on the head and it cut through, you don’t need as much of that content.

But the other thing on the flip side is, I’m a big believer in repetition. Once you have something that’s very clear, very precise, and you have three steps, how many different ways can you talk about those three steps on repeat over and over and over and over and over and over?

Different story, same steps. It’s very repetitive. Your audience needs to hear it on repeat over and over and over again, and it actually makes your content easier to create.

Debbie: There’s a couple things. There is a fear a lot of people have, and I include myself, when I first started doing this on social media, with visibility, with being out there, with showing me—what if people don’t like me? It’s scary. Most of us didn’t grow up on video when we were five years old. So it’s all very awkward and strange.

What I help people think about, and this is what really helped me, is when you’re creating content, when you’re on video, when you’re doing even a podcast, think of one person. Don’t think of a whole room. Think of one person. You’re actually creating content for one person, and that allows you to talk with them, not at them.

Most of us when we’re talking in a small room, we know how to talk and be ourselves—this is something we’ve done our whole life. It feels very awkward to put content out to masses or get on video. That’s where we trip up in our head and start the judgment noise. But just bringing it back—we actually help people create a persona, an ideal persona, which is one person, so that all of your content is being written to them. It’s talking about your offer, and then you’re in a conversation, and that’s really what social media is. It’s a conversation, and you’re sharing. It’s reciprocal. It’s not marketing, it’s a conversation, and it’s relational.

Debbie: I was working with one financial coach at one point, and we actually interview people with specific questions, and I’m looking for the actual words they use. We don’t want to wrap it up or have AI come up with how they talk about it. And this financial coach would tell me things like, they literally will say, “I am terrified of looking at my numbers. I look at my numbers, and it literally makes my throat tight. I want to cry.”

That’s certain. That’s how I feel. Really, instead of “Oh, manage your budget.” That’s not right now. “I don’t understand, this is causing me serious—it is keeping me up at night. I am so afraid to look at my credit card balance it’s literally causing me to feel sick and not sure where the money’s gone.” These are conversations before she worked with people—these are what her clients were telling her, and it was really hard to get them to even want to hire a financial coach, because it scared them so much.

So how do they talk about that fear? What do they actually want? What’s their version of what the goal is? How do they talk about that? Those specifics seem so obvious, and who cares?

They’re really important. If you’re talking with one person, humans mirror, we repeat back, and it allows us to feel connected. That’s what great marketing does. We hear how they talk and then we feel connected. It sounds too simple, it’s exactly what it is.

Debbie: First of all, they’re amazing. I meet so many amazing experts, and a lot of this is belief work. They have something so valuable, and the world really does need you. The world needs us. They need us, and we have to get out of the way in order for that to happen. A big part of this is the mindset and belief work, which you have to be deeply steeped in, to be able to get your word out of what really matters.

Really think about, what am I here to really do? Why does it matter? And then think about that one person you could help right now. Just go, and do it messy.

About Debbie White

Debbie White is a brand and marketing strategist and the founder of Clarity Wins Clients. She’s the creator of the Lighthouse Effect, a proven client attraction system designed for coaches and service providers who want to be the only choice for their ideal clients. With a background launching iconic brands like Starbucks and helping build multiple seven-figure businesses, Debbie brings over 20 years of real-world marketing experience to the coaching industry. She’s coached hundreds of coaches, experts, and consultants to clarify their message, own their unique value, and grow to multiple six figures without paid ads, overwhelm, or fitting into a box. Known for her clear frameworks, honest insights, and high-touch teaching style, Debbie helps coaches build sought-after brands and consistent client pipelines by saying less, better, more often.