5. What to Do When Nobody Shows Up

What If Nobody Shows Up?

Last episode we talked about taming your what-if monster. This episode tackles the specific what-if that stops most people dead in their tracks: "What if nobody shows up? What if nobody buys?"

This fear hits one-on-one clients, events, classes, and launches. Like all what-ifs, the solution is the same: actually answer the question.

When nobody shows up to my fitness classes (yes, it happens): I use the time anyway. Work on choreography, practice moves, learn routines. I'm still there to do fitness stuff—just differently.

When clients no-show sessions: I use that coaching time to coach others in communities, write content, or coach myself. The time was set aside for serving people and moving my business forward.

When group calls start with just me because everyone's late: I teach to the empty room. Replay watchers get the teaching plus live coaching when folks arrive.

For launches that don't hit numbers: I extend deadlines, examine messaging, get curious about different results, give myself more time to sell.

Your homework: Think about what you've been holding back on because you're afraid nobody will show. Write those down. Then answer: "What would I do if nobody came/bought?"

Bonus: Pick one and go do it. Use this as a FAFO experiment. When you approach everything with the goal of finding out rather than avoiding failure, there's no way to fail—only learn.

Mentioned in this episode:

• Episode 4, "How to Tame Your "What If?" Monster" (https://fckyeahpod.buzzsprout.com/2198615/13387420-4-how-to-tame-your-what-if-monster)
  
  
• Episode 2, "The FAFO Method: Why and How to f*ck around and find out in your business" (https://fckyeahpod.buzzsprout.com/2198615)

Prefer video? Watch the video version of this episode on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/qI4Z5gZUvsY

*****
I’m Kristen King, and I’ve been a coach for pretty much my entire professional career — since the early 2000s after my first solo business hit six figures less than 2 years out of college. Now, I teach humans from all walks of life how to shift from "fuck me" to "fuck yeah" so they can thrive in work, business, relationships, health, and more.

Over the last 15+ years, I've worked in for-profit and non-profit organizations across multiple industries, earned an MBA and a master's in publishing, given countless presentations and trainings for groups ranging from 4 to 6,000, and supported clients — both individuals and organizations — on four continents.

This isn't my first rodeo. In fact, there's been a lot of rodeos. So saddle up, friend, because we're about to go on an awesome ride together. I'm so glad you're here.

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Episode Transcript

Kristen King (00:09):
If you're ready for entrepreneurship to feel a
hell of a lot easier, you're inthe right place. Welcome to From
fuck me to fuck yeah, thepodcast, we're service based
entrepreneurs learn how to tuneout all the fear based bullshit
that paralyzes you, and how totune in to your unique Fuck
yeah, I'm integrative businesscoach Kristen King, and I'm
pretty much the bad influenceyour mother warned you about. On

(00:32):
this show, I'm gonna teach youhow to peel back all the layers
of perfectionism, peoplepleasing and pressure that stand
between you and how you reallywant this whole entrepreneur
thing to go. And while we're atit, we're gonna do that for the
whole rest of your life, too. Iam not here to make your
business look exactly like mine.
I'm here to make your businesslook exactly like yours. So

(00:52):
stick around, fuck around andfind out what happens when my
bad influence rubs off on you.
Your mom's probably going tohate it, but you are going to
love it. Let's do this shit.
Hello, friends. Welcome back.
Last time we were talking abouthow to tame your What if monster
with asking some differentquestions and reframing things.
And one of those key tips andtools is to actually answer the

(01:14):
question, what if, and in thisepisode, we're going to talk
about a specific what ifs that Ihear from my clients all the
time. It's the what if no oneshows up? What if no one buys.
And this is something that canhappen with one on one clients
with events or activities orclasses that you're running with
a launch that you're doing. Itcan happen across a variety of

(01:36):
settings. But those are thethree that I tend to see the
most. And so I want to talkabout specifically, what if
someone doesn't show up whenthey're supposed to be getting
coached or otherwise served byand just like with the general
what ifs, we were talking aboutlast time, we want to actually
answer the question, what ifthat happens? What are you

(01:57):
actually going to do? Once youknow the answer to the question,
once you know what you would do,it's no longer some scary,
nebulous, weird thing that youneed to avoid. It's just
something that you can dealwith. So let me give you a
couple of examples of what thatmight look like. Some of you may
know if you've been following mefor a while, I teach in person

(02:18):
fitness classes. And sometimesit's a really small group,
sometimes it's a big group,every now and then when I'm
there to teach a fitness class,nobody shows up. It hasn't
happened in years. So it's areally infrequent occurrence.
But every now and then ithappens every now and then one
person will show up or twopeople will show up. And it's

(02:39):
just a small group. And so whenI first started teaching
classes, that was something thatI found really intimidating, it
freaked me out, I was like, ohmy god, I'm gonna feel so
embarrassed. This will be such awaste of time, blah, blah, blah,
blah, all these things spinningout in my head about what would
happen if nobody showed up onenight. And then it happened one

(03:01):
time that nobody showed up. Andso what did I do, I use the time
for the thing I was planning todo anyway, instead of teaching a
class, I use the time to work onmy choreography, to practice
some stuff that had beenchallenging me to learn a new
routine and start practicingthat. So for the next class, I'd
be ready to go. And that's thesame kind of thing that we can

(03:23):
do with any situation wherepeople aren't showing up. You
can continue to do the thingthat you were planning on, but
you may just do it in adifferent way. If I'm there to
teach a dance based fitnessclass, and nobody shows up, I'm
not going to be in the front ofthe room, bustin it out and
queuing people like I would beif there was somebody else

(03:44):
there. But I'm still going touse the time to work out I'm
still going to use the time togrow my skills. And the same
thing happens on the odd chancethat a client doesn't show up
for a session. Life happenssometimes people get stuck in
traffic, they lose track oftime, the power goes out, a kid
starts puking and they don'thave time to cancel before their

(04:05):
call supposed to start becauseit happened five minutes ago,
and we're supposed to be meetingright now. There's any number of
reasons that people can miss anappointment and they don't all
mean bad things. Many of themare just very like common
everyday normal people reasons.
And as long as we don't make ita whole thing, it doesn't have

(04:27):
to be a thing. So if you'veshown up to coach somebody or to
provide some other kind ofservice and that person doesn't
show up, you still get to go usethat time for coaching. That's
what you set it aside for or webdesign or you know, therapy,
whatever it is, whatever serviceit is that you provide, you
still get to use that time.
Because you set it aside todeliver a service you set it

(04:48):
aside to do something on behalfof your business and the people
you serve. So for me if a clientmisses is a session or they're
running really late. And I don'tknow what's going on, because I
haven't heard anything from themyet. I will use that time to go
coach other people, I'll go intoa community that I'm a member
of, and I'll look for someonewho has a question. And I'll try

(05:11):
to provide some support, I'llwrite an email or a social post
for my audience. Sometimes I'lljust coach myself in that time.
But that time is set aside fordoing something in support of my
clients in support of mycustomers in support of my
audience. And even if thatindividual person I was planning
to work with didn't come, I canstill do that I can still move

(05:32):
things forward for myself. Andfor everybody, including that
person, the next time I actuallysee them. I've had times with
group calls, where stuff wasgoing on, everybody was running
late that day, they eventuallyshowed up. But for the 15
minutes that I was by myselfwaiting for people to come. I
just taught on a topic. Andanyone who watched the replay of

(05:54):
that call, got the teaching, andthen they also got the live
coaching, that happens later. SoI wouldn't challenge you to
really answer the question ofwhat if nobody shows up? What
are you going to do? How are yougoing to use that time on your
behalf on behalf of yourbusiness on behalf of the people
you serve? Even if it looks alittle different from how you

(06:15):
originally thought you weregoing to be spending that time?
Once you can answer thatquestion. And once you create a
plan for yourself of what youwill do in that scenario, that
situation is not going to be asscary. Anytime you start
thinking about running a webinaror a class or putting together
an in person workshop and yourbrain offers me. Okay, but what

(06:37):
if I put in all this work? Andnobody shows up? You get to
actually answer the question.
You get to use the same thingfor your launches, if you have,
say, a 30 day period that you'relaunching a product or service
or event or whatever, and youget to the end of the 30 days,
and nobody has registered forit. What would you do? That

(06:58):
doesn't happen very often. Butit happens sometimes. What would
you do? For me anytime that Ihit the deadline that I had set
for myself or a launch to closeif I don't have the numbers that
I'm looking for, or if I getthis gut feeling that there's
more people out there, and Ishould make some adjustments to
get them in and adjust thetiming, I push the date back, I

(07:20):
give myself more time to sell.
I'll look at the content thatI'm putting out or my calls to
action clear. Am I talking aboutmy results in a clearer way? How
can I use this to learn aboutwhat might generate a different
result either next time or thistime if I give myself some more
space? And when we look at thesewood? So when we look at these
things from curiosity, and wefocus on answering the question,

(07:42):
because there's always ananswer, it takes that
uncertainty factor out of it.
Because like we talked about inthe last episode, when we answer
what if we're creating ouruncertainty, we're making
decisions about what we're goingto do. So here's what I want you
to do right now, I want you tothink about the things that you

(08:04):
have been thinking about doing.
But I've been holding back onbecause you're afraid nobody's
going to buy it. Nobody's goingto come What if somebody doesn't
show up? Whatever those thingsare, that are stopping you that
are in the universe of whatwe're talking about, in this
episode, identify what thosethings are for you. And then I
want you to spend a couple ofminutes actually answering the

(08:25):
question, what if I tried to dothis thing? And nobody bought
it? What if I offered thissession or this event or
whatever? And nobody came? Whatwould I do? Create that plan for
yourself? And then check in? Andnotice how the feeling around
that question has changed nowthat you have answered it. So
that's the first thing I wantyou to do. And depending on how

(08:47):
you're feeling, what the thingis, what your capacity is, in
this moment. For bonus points,which are completely made up and
don't matter at all, but arejust sometimes fun. For bonus
points. If that's fun for you.
Pick one of those things thatyou've been holding back on that
you just answered the what ifquestion about and go do it. Use

(09:09):
this as an opportunity to testout the answer to that what if
to test out that plan to try itto see what happens to see what
you learn and put that shit intopractice. You get to use
everything you do in yourbusiness as a fafo experiment.
And if that term isn't familiarto you, you're gonna you're
gonna want to go back into pastepisodes and listen to the one

(09:30):
about the fafo methods thatexplains exactly when, why and
how to fuck around and find outin your business. Because when
we are approaching all of thiswith the goal of finding out
with the goal of trying things,seeing what happens and then
using what we learned from it,there's really not a way for you
to fail here. There's only waysfor you to learn. There's only

(09:52):
ways for you to answer thosequestions with concrete evidence
to discover to try things andpractice and then try something
else and see what happens. Andthis gets To be a lot more fun
and a lot less stress. Andreally it all comes from
answering that question. So, goahead, try it out, see what you
come up with, see what youranswer is, and then go put that

(10:14):
into practice. And if you want,hit me up on the socials, slide
into my DMs, slide into my inboxand let me know what you noticed
and what actually happened foryou. I'd love to hear about it.
You'll find the links to get intouch with me through my website
through my socials are all inthe show notes. But the most
important thing is for you to goforth and answer that question

(10:36):
for yourself and then put thatanswer into practice. Have so
much fun, no longer worryingabout these things because you
know exactly what you're goingto do if that thing happens, and
you get to be totally confidentin that moving forward. I'll see
you next timeif you liked this episode,

(11:00):
you're gonna love the rest of mycontent. Visit the show notes
for links to all the good stuffI've created to help you go from
fuck meat to fuck yeah, be sureto follow me wherever you hang
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(11:21):
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(11:43):
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