Find Life Coaching Clients

From 0 to your first 100 clients

There is a wall between you and your first paying client. But to find life coaching clients in an authentic and sustainable way is not easy. I want to help remove that wall so that you can start a professional coach journey.

If you can secure 1 paying coaching client, you can secure 10. If you can secure 10 coaching clients you can secure 100.

 

 

 

 

 

The wall between you and your paying clients is made of ignorance.

Ignorance is what you don’t know, and in this case what you don’t know is stopping you and will always stop you from being able to be a life-changing coach with a steady clientele.

If you’re prepared to roll up your sleeves and remove the wall of ignorance you can make it to your first 100 clients very easily.

If you’re not prepared to do the work, if you hold on to bad habits and myths then you’re not going to make it. Even if you’re the most talented brilliant coach, if you don’t know how to remove this ignorance, no one is going to say “yes” to being coached by you.

This saddens me to no end.

To see talented skilled coaches with a genuine desire to change lives, held back by the wall of ignorance. They don’t know how to start, they believe in false myths, they have fears that grow in the darkness of ignorance that keeps them from moving forward successfully.

There is no quick weekend fix. It takes consistent action to build a sustainable in demand life-changing coaching business. But if you have your wall of ignorance in the way, you are guaranteed to watch your dreams die. I don’t want that for you. But I’m not going to pretend that you can click your fingers and magically have a rewarding and lucrative business.

You have to really want a successful coaching business. You have to want it enough to put in the work, and to remove the wall of ignorance.

Use the Ignorance Checklist to see which of these mistakes you might be making already.

Top 10 Ignorance Checklist

Answer either True/False to each question then add them up and read the answers below.

• 1. After I qualify as a professional coach, I need to build a website as soon as possible to market myself and attract clients.
  True or False?

• 2. It’s a good idea to not restrict myself. I must market my coaching to everyone.
  True or False?

• 3. This is a good website headline, “I offer professional life coaching at internationally benchmarked standards.”
  True or False?

• 4. To find my first coaching clients I need a website, possibly a brochure, a business card, some social media exposure and to possibly network at coaching events.
  True or False?

• 5. I do need an internationally accredited qualification to coach. I can’t just call myself a coach.
  True or False?

• 6. I’ll probably need to first explain what coaching is to people for them to be interested in being coached.
  True or False?

• 7. Aiming to secure 40 coaching sessions from 40 clients a month is a sustainable coaching business model.
  True or False?

• 8. If I tell people that I am now qualified as a professional coach, this will generate interest in my coaching services.
  True or False?

• 9. I must decide on all of the details of my coaching services/products before I offer them to the world.
  True or False?

• 10. It might be best to call myself a life coach, so that I don’t restrict myself and can coach many different people on many different topics.
  True or False?

How many “True” answers did you have? How many “False” answers did you have?

The truth is that in my experience every one of the statements is false.

If you have even one true answer, this might be an area that blocks your ability to become a successful coach and secure your first 100 paying clients.

Here is an explanation for each total followed by an understanding about how to correct these damaging myths.

You only have a few areas of ignorance, but even one false belief can severely block your progress or at the very least delay your path to success.

You have quite a few areas of ignorance, but please be gentle on yourself about this. That’s why we are here to teach and guide you through this process. We don’t know what we don’t know. With a bit of knowledge you can remove this wall of ignorance and move forward with confidence.

Your wall is quite solid, and if you had tried to proceed with this wall in place you would have struggled. If you’ve already tried and are struggling now you might realize why. It’s not your fault, if we don’t have the knowledge and we don’t know how who can blame us?

Read the answers below to get a plan of action together to remove the wall of ignorance that is keeping you from becoming a successful life-changing coach.

The answers to remove that wall of ignorance

1. After I qualify as a professional coach, I need to build a website as soon as possible to market myself and attract clients. True or False?
ANSWER “False”

This is a very common and costly mistake that new coaches make. The last thing you should do is build a website at the beginning of your journey.

95-98% of the Internet is filled with failed websites. I don’t want your website to be one of them. A website absolutely does not guarantee or easily attract new clients.

In fact the time and money that you spend on a website, can keep you from success because it’s a costly distraction. Don’t get me wrong there is a time and a place to build your coaching website, but it’s not the first thing you do once you qualify.

If you must build a website as soon as you qualify, make sure that it’s a very small inexpensive but professional site, just to put you on the Internet. But don’t expect it to do more than what handing out business cards might do. You will have to send people to it, but at least you’re there.

I personally know many coaches that have had several years of success, and they still don’t have a website.

Once you have established clearly who your clientele is, and have proven this to yourself with a steady stream of paying clients, then build the website to put your marketing on autopilot.

2. It’s a good idea to not restrict myself. I must market my coaching to everyone. True or False?
ANSWER “False”

Even if you can coach everyone, this doesn’t mean that your marketing message must be for everyone. In fact, I can almost guarantee that you will not succeed if you try to market your coaching to everyone, or to very bored groups like for example men, women etc.

Amateur business builders and new coaches seem to always make the mistake of thinking that they’re going to be able to attract more people, by marketing to more people — the opposite is true.

Think about this, if I put you on stage in front of a 1000 random people in a hall, and gave you two minutes to present them with your coaching services and get them interested in being coached, how would you craft your message?

If you take a moment to think about this, the first thing you will realize is that your message will be weak, because it’s hard to know what a 1000 random people need.

If you knew that all 1000 people were first time entrepreneurs, you could customize your message to speak directly to the needs of first time entrepreneurs. You could create a coaching service or product to directly help the exact problems that first time entrepreneurs face. This would make your message strong and appealing. This would increase the chances of you securing clients tenfold.

So instead of marketing to broad generic groups, you will secure more coaching clients if you focus on narrow groups — which is called niche marketing.

3. This is a good website headline, “I offer professional life coaching at internationally benchmarked standards.” True or False?
ANSWER “False”

This is a classic amateur mistake. If we focus on talking about ourselves, using “I …” a lot, Instead of focusing on the people that we all wanting to serve, and their most important needs — which makes our message weak.

Our website headline is our one opportunity to keep someone reading, if we talk about ourselves we miss the opportunity to be relevant to our target market. Why do you stay on a website? You stay because the website is solving your problem, it’s speaking to your pain very specifically and offering you solutions.

Our website headline needs to speak to our target niche market, specifically showing them the solution to the destination that we want to take them to.

4. To find my first coaching clients I need a website, possibly a brochure, a business card, some social media exposure and to possibly network at coaching events. True or False?
ANSWER “False”

The best and easiest way to find your first coaching clients is to have what I call “sticky conversations” with people in a casual non-cheesy way. This will cost you nothing but a little time, is low risk and is going to help you to formulate your coaching product.

Please whatever you do, don’t rush off to spend time and money creating websites, brochures, business cards and social media adverts, or even trying to network at coaching events — these can all play a role but much later.

To find your first coaching clients have conversations with people, focus on being of service to them by determining their most significant, specific and searched for solutions. Then show them how your coaching can solve their most specific, significant and searched for problems.

Show your potential clients how your coaching can solve their most specific, significant and searched for problems.

If you have learned InnerLifeSkills coaching methods, you need not sell, you need only use the coaching methods to have solution focused casual conversations with people. This can be online or in person. The more conversations you have the more easily you will begin to naturally convert people into clients.

5. I do need an internationally accredited qualification to coach. I can’t just call myself a coach. True or False?
ANSWER “False”

Please check the laws in your own country, but for most of the places where I have worked, and where I have trained professional coaches, there are no legal restrictions around the use of the term “coach”. It’s not the same as using the term “Doctor” which is legally restricted and requires the qualification and license to use.

This means that you can call yourself a coach even if you never trained a day in your life.

So now it’s up to your morals and conscience to decide whether you want to be a legitimate, credible and confident coach or someone who is just calling themselves a coach.

Naturally, I strongly recommend that you get an internationally accredited qualification, not only for the moral and ethical reasons, so that you can truly change lives and not damage people, but also so that you can attract higher calibre clients and charge your worth as a coach.

6. I’ll probably need to first explain what coaching is to people for them to be interested in being coached. True or False?
ANSWER “False”

Explaining what coaching is to your market must come second in your message, not first.

When you want to go on holiday, do you want to see photographs of the airplane that will take you to your destination or do you want to see photos of the beautiful idyllic destination? We want to see the destination before we want to hear about how we are going to get there.

If the destination is appealing enough, we might not care too much about how we are going to get there, this is not as much of a priority as the destination itself.

Instead of explaining what coaching is, or trying to market coaching, you need to be explaining and marketing the destination that coaching takes people to.

This should be your absolute priority. Give people the clearest understanding of where you want to take them, then show them briefly how you’re going to take them there, by using coaching.

When you realize this approach, you can shape your message to be powerful and attractive to clients. You will find that it is much easier to make your way to your first 100 clients if you focus on sharing why you care about the destination that you want to take people to.

7. Aiming to secure 40 coaching sessions from 40 clients a month is a sustainable coaching business model. True or False?
ANSWER “False”

Do you want the good news or the bad news? First the bad news — it’s very difficult to secure 40 coaching sessions from 40 clients in any given month, never mind sustainably month to month for years ahead. This is not a sustainable approach.

So now if you are shocked, wondering how on earth you’re going to secure your first 100 clients and build a sustainable coaching business, I am pleased because the wall of your ignorance is breaking.

These are my 3 alternative recommendations.

• Firstly, focus on selling coaching packages, instead of selling individual coaching sessions. Do the math, it’s far easier to sell 10 clients on 10 packages, than 40 clients on 40 sessions.

• Secondly, don’t just rely on selling individual coaching sessions. Time is limited, and your income will be limited. Create added value additional products and services, that are all in service to your niche market.

  Examples include, mentoring, online training video packages, books and courses, guided visualization audios, WhatsApp support, checklists, templates and strategies, mastermind groups etc. Rather add to the value of your coaching services to charge premium rates, and then need to sell many smaller 1 hour coaching sessions.

  Make sure that some of these alternative income streams are passive income streams, which means that you are earning whilst you’re sleeping.

• Thirdly, offer group coaching. Group coaching is a multiplier, you can impact and change more lives in a quicker way, as well as multiply your income per hour. So make sure that your coaching training includes how to coach groups, like InnerLifeSkills coaching training offers. Enrol for ILS Coach Professional or ILS Master Coach course qualifications.

8. If I tell people that I am now qualified as a professional coach, this will generate interest in my coaching services. True or False?
ANSWER “False”

This is not a strong approach to generating interest in your coaching services. Remember that we all have only a few seconds to generate interest, so we must use these few seconds wisely.

Whether we are writing headlines for our website, or introducing ourselves after a handshake in person, we need to be able to generate interest quickly.

People, mostly don’t know what a professional coach is, or they are filled with misunderstandings about what coaching is. Find a way to explain who you serve and what destination your coaching takes people to — in other words describing the specific significant solutions that your services deliver on. This generates interest and communicates the value of your coaching far more effectively.

9. I must decide on all the details of my coaching services/products before I offer them to the world. True or False?
ANSWER “False”

This is one of the biggest and most common mistakes that I see. Aspiring and new coaches think that they have to plan their products and services in great detail before they even go into the world to coach. This hardly ever works.

The truth is, we actually don’t know what our product and service should ideally be until we start coaching.

But how do we start coaching if we don’t know what our product and service is? You strike a happy medium. You plan a flexible outline sketch of your service or product offerings and remain available to customize and adapt your offering as you learn on the go.

Honestly this is the best approach because it enables you to custom build services to exactly meet the demands of the people you serve. You’ll find so many more opportunities this way, than trying to perfect an off the shelf product that you try to sell to people regardless of what they want or need.

Make sure of course that you learn a coaching methodology that is highly flexible so that you can achieve this.

Naturally, InnerLifeSkills coaching is highly flexible — in fact I call it a plug and play coaching methodology because it enables you to customize coaching services and products on the fly.

10. It might be best to call myself a life coach, so that I don’t restrict myself and can coach many different people on many different topics. True or False?
ANSWER “False”

It is not ideal to call yourself a life coach, because most people don’t know what this is going to give them.

People want specific solutions that are significant, they want to find solutions for the things that they are looking for, they want to know where you’re going to take them not how you are going to take them there.

At InnerLifeSkills, we train and share with you 12 different coaching specializations, but I actually recommend that you create your own coaching brand and style that specifically meets the needs of your specific niche market.

The guidance that I have offered above is invaluable. I recommend that you make a note of each solution and take massive action. Every successful coach that I have trained has used these strategies.

If you use the strategies, you can secure 1 paying client. If you secure 1 paying client you can get 10. If you can get 10 you can get 100.

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