We recently connected with Brie Pugh and have shared our conversation below.

Brie, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today The first dollar your business earns is always special and we’d love to hear how your brand made its first dollar of revenue.

It took me 8 months to book my first 1:1 coaching client. I’ll be real with you….I had no idea what I was doing in the beginning. I didn’t have a clear message, I hadn’t done market research, I didn’t have an offer that was validated with a market need. It took me some time to put all of these pieces together, to establish myself as an authority, and to gain the confidence that I needed to actually receive clients.

What helped me land my first clients was getting very clear in my brand message and positioning, meaning: I knew who I could help and exactly what I could help them with and I used my content to talk about the tangible results they wanted to achieve. I stopped caring so much about what people thought and how I was perceived online and I just started speaking boldly about what I offered. I started making videos on instagram, inviting people to book a free session with me….I’d never done this before, but I wanted to build more trust with my audience.

My first client, saw one of those invitation posts, and booked a session. At the end of the session, I invited her to continue through my 1:1 program. Because I was so clear on who I could help and what I could help them with, my offer was exactly what she wanted at the time, and she became my first client!

I coached her to launch the fitness coaching business she’d been dreaming of, but was totally terrified to start. We created an online group program that she sold out in a matter of weeks and she was able to quit her full time job within 90 days of us starting together. She already had an incredible foundation for herself from building an audience before she was ready, and I just gave her the push and accountability she needed to fly! She is now a wildly popular and successful fitness coach and influencer, with brand deals and app content and all the things! To the day, she is one of my favorite and proudest client success stories.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

My name is Brie Pugh, I’m a content marketing & business coach for female service-based entrepreneurs. I’ve been in the coaching world for about 5 years now. I work with ambitious, purpose-driven women to help them make clear + consistent + confident content online for their businesses.

I believe we all have gifts and wisdom to share with the world, and that we can channel that all into a soul-sourced personal brand that serves others in some way. So, my mission is to help as many women as I can to share their message and authentic expression online, and really own who they are so they can become their own muse in the process.

A lot of the women who come into my world are either too much in their masculine or too much in their feminine energy. They either need to add more soul, creativity, intuition, and feminine power, so their brand messaging and content is more activating, or they need to add more structure, strategies, and systems into how they are showing up and creating so they don’t burn out. So that’s why we focus on creating brand messaging that is a reflection of their authenticity and unique genius, but we also dive deep into content creation and content strategy so that they are showing up online in a way that is actually sustainable and supportive of their energy.

Many peers and past clients have told me that I am an activator for them, that I help them remember their gifts and their power and see what they cannot see within themselves. I’m also great at simplifying concepts, and making the more “masculine” aspects of marketing and business more intuitive and approachable.

What brings me the most fulfillment and pride in my work is seeing my clients take bold action and to make their purpose bigger than their fears. I love seeing them craft vulnerable pieces of content that shows how brilliant AND how human they are. To witness these women owning their genius and expressing their creativity online in service to others…there is nothing better than a woman flowing in her full authentic power!

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

After 3 years of life coaching, I pivoted my business to focus on marketing coaching for female service-based entrepreneurs last year. I want to share with you the process I went through to make that transition, because it’s totally normal to pivot! It can feel a little scary at first, but it’s worth it. And you get to create a personal brand (or any business, really) that feels like the most authentic expression of you! And guess what? That expression evolves as you evolve. So here we go:

I got to a point in 2021 where I was no longer feeling fulfilled and aligned with the life coaching work I was doing, I knew that a new chapter of evolution was happening. A death & rebirth cycle, if you will.

The biggest thing when we are moving through the discomfort of knowing that one chapter of our lives is ending and another one is beginning, is to simply ALLOW it, to surrender to it, and to trust that even if things feel very foggy now…the clarity will come.

So where do you begin when you are seeking clarity on your professional path? The first thing I decided to anchor in was: what am I naturally good at? What are my gifts and strengths? what wisdom have I embodied? I reached out to a few friends and peers to ask them for feedback on what they saw in me, because sometimes we are blind to it ourselves.

This was eye opening for me, because I realized I hadn’t been fully OWNING my gifts and skillsets when it came to content creation and online marketing. I had sworn them off when I swore off my last toxic corporate job. So here I was, chasing my passions- my love for self-development and healing, intimate connection, and supporting women in their purpose, but I wasn’t fully applying my gifts and wisdom to them!

So I decided to do that. I realized the next evolution was for me to apply my marketing genius to serve female entrepreneurs, in a way that was unique to me…a way that was focused on intuition, creativity, sustainability, and strategy.

Then, I decided to start connecting with women and having conversations, and asking them what some of their biggest desires and struggles were when it came to marketing their businesses. I resonated so much with what they were saying, because much of it was similar to what I’d experienced in the past.

And I knew I could create a solution. Because I’d created a similar solution for myself that had really improved how I was marketing my business online.

So I got really clear on my brand message and positioning. I owned what my genius was, I infused it into my brand and my content, and I created an irresistible offer for my audience. And that has resulted in 1:1 clients and expanded into a variety of additional offerings. I feel fulfilled and aligned with my work and the direction it is going! The women who are coming into my world are like visionary, creative rockstars and I’m so grateful I decided to trust the discomfort and take the action to pivot.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

When I got into the coaching industry, I was very naive. I had no prior knowledge of the industry or the “online entrepreneurial world” really. I had worked with a coach before, but she wasn’t online! All I knew was I had this calling to help other people heal their relationship with themselves and live the lives they deeply desired to live. So, I let me intuition guide me, and it led me to coaching.

I knew I needed to establish an online presence and start building a personal brand in order to grow my business. But what I wasn’t prepared for was how noisy the online space was! I’d felt soooo clear and confident that this was my calling and that I had amazing gifts and tools to share with others. I trusted that if I just started to share my message, the people would show up. But, pretty soon after I created a new instagram and started using my facebook account for my business….the overwhelm and the doubt crept in, and then it consumed me.

There were hundreds, no thousands, no tens of thousands of other online entrepreneurs shouting about how they had cracked the code. If I would just follow their 5 step formula, or watch their webinar, or download their free pdf, or invest in their program….my business would explode! It felt like all I saw online was how everyone had THE strategy to create five-figure cash months. I heard a lot about hustling, paid ads, cold DMing, and sales sales sales!

Pretty soon, I had very little confidence in myself and my internal guidance system. I let myself begin to believe that all these other people knew better than me, and I should listen to them. So I handed my credit card over and went into debt to pay for strategy-heavy coach. I downloaded all the freebies. I paid for a sales training membership. I DM’d people I’d never met. I tried running some facebook ads.

And you know what? NONE of it worked.
All of it felt so YUCK in my body.
I felt like none of the strategies in the world could help when what I really needed was emotional & mental support of navigating this roller coaster of online business.
I questioned whether I was really cut out for this.
I almost quit multiple times.

But I knew there had to be a different way of doing things, I had just figured out exactly what I DIDN’T want to do first.
So I decided it was safe to trust my intuition and my body more. I decided I didn’t need to follow someone else’s strategy, or create rules and limitations for how my business got to grow.
I started sharing more of my personality online, speaking in the way I would speak to a friend. I started sharing my points of view on things. I started creating offers that excited me. I started letting my feminine creative energy to come through more, and I started letting go of a lot of the hyper-masculine pushy, rigid ways of doing things that I’d been conditioned into.

There was a period of time where I actually leaned too far into my feminine after this, where I let intuition guide everything. While this was the refresh and liberation I needed, it wasn’t sustainable.

What I’ve learned through my own de-conditioning and trial & error, is that the best way of running a business is with a balance of BOTH masculine and feminine energy. We DO in fact need structure, systems, and strategies. This is what holds things together. But we also need room for creativity, intuition, and lots of pleasure. This is the magic sauce that fuels a business and gives your brand a unique edge. When you allow room for both, and let yourself do it all in a way that feels aligned with your energy and values, that’s when you truly can thrive!

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/briepugh/
• Other: Tik Tok: @brie_pugh