How to Get Your First Coaching Client?

Show Notes

How do I find my first coaching client? It’s a question I actually get asked a lot because we go into our qualifications, we do our coaching, we maybe do some mentoring, some leadership, that sort of thing. And then clients are just supposed to pop out of the air. You just do your qualifications; you stick up a Facebook post and off you go. No, it didn’t work like that. Well, maybe LinkedIn put something on LinkedIn that didn’t work either. And that is the experience that most coaches have, particularly straight out of coaching school. Coaching is a great skill, but if you’re going to run it as a business, you also need some business skills. So today, let’s have a chat about some of the mistakes that I see and see often

Mistake 1. Trying to Talk to Everybody

People want to be a generalist. They want to help everybody. If you’re fishing in a bigger pool, wouldn’t that make it better fishing? Well, not really, because the problem is that there’s so many other people fishing in that pool as well, and they’re all using the same bait, and they’ve been doing it a bit longer than you have, or in some instances a lot longer than you have.

So the fish, the clients are saying them first. And if you’re being a generalist, then there’s nothing in it for the client. There’s no what’s in it for me. You’re special. You talk my language. You know exactly what I need and how to help me. So, the first thing you need to do is think about nation. I know it’s scary.

Cutting down your audience means that you are not going to get any people. But actually, it’s counterintuitive. It’s totally the opposite. By cutting down your audience and speaking directly to them is how you actually get your first clients. If you think about Facebook, where did Facebook start? It started in one dormitory, on one campus in the university, and once that got their mates involved and everybody was starting to think that was working really well, then I expanded it to the whole campus and then once that started, they expanded it to a couple of campuses and then it went world domination and not the other way round.

They didn’t try to talk to everybody with this fantastic idea to begin with, because nobody’s listening. You can’t talk to everybody in one go. So you need to start getting very specific about who it is that you’re going to help that perfect person. And I like to think about it as your best friend. So if you were talking to your best friend and you had this amazing thing that was going to help them, you’d be out there wanting to talk to them.

Mistake 2. Unclear Messaging

If you don’t know who you’re talking to, it’s very difficult to be very clear about what you’re talking about. We’ve all been to parties and had conversations with people where they swap from one topic to another. Halfway through, they don’t even finish a sentence. It’s very frustrating and annoying and it wastes a lot of time.

But that’s quite often what we’re doing with marketing is we’re jumping from this topic to that topic, and we’re going back to this one and we’re finishing that one. So, making sure that your messaging is really clear. So, start with one offer to one customer to make that your special client. I worked with a lady who been a season coach.

She’d been coaching for quite some time, but she wasn’t getting the traction that she wanted in her business. And what we worked out was she had too many offices to too many different people. So what we did was we looked at identity to income, reduce that down, made it so much clearer, made one person her ideal person. And then over time, she had more than one offer.

But she started with one. Now out of that, she ended up getting a speaking opportunity in one of the major capital cities here in Australia. And then from there, she gets invitation to go overseas to England, where she was able to have more speaking opportunities because now she had a target audience. Now she was clear and the people went, oh, we know who you help, and you help the same kind of people we do and we don’t compete.

Mistake 3. You Don't Have a Compelling Offer

So part of your messaging needs to be making sure that you do have a compelling offer. Because if people don’t know who you’re talking to, what your messages are, and what it is that they can buy, then how can they buy?

And that’s quite often what people do, particularly with podcasts and content, is I put out all this free content, free content, free content, free content. They solve their people’s problems. It’s amazing. But that’s not a business. You’re not going to make a living doing that. Yes, you do need to do free content. Yes, people do need to try before they buy and get value ahead of time, but you also need to give them something to buy so that you can make a real business out of this.

Mistake 4. No Constant Marketing Plans

So we see people going out there and really going hard at the beginning, putting out lots of stuff. They get a few clients and that’s great. Terrific. And then nothing because what have they been doing? They’ve been running their programs. They’ve been doing their one on one. They’ve been servicing those clients and getting great results that maybe they’ve got a testimonial or a case study, but they haven’t been marketing.

They haven’t had anything out there for the next lot of people to be finding out about them. So the thing with marketing is it needs to be constant and it needs to be when you’re doing really well, because then you can use those case studies and you can use those testimonials and continue to market it out. Now, if you don’t have any right way to do it, is offer a free session and use that in exchange for a testimonial.

Now, you do need to say that upfront to the person that you would like to do it as an exchange for a testimonial. But quite often people are happy to do that. So that might be a way to get yourself a bit of experience and some case studies as well. Think about using your existing network. People go out and they mistake.

They do. It is they want to do the latest, greatest whatever. They’re watching people that are a long way ahead of them and they’ve got yeah, I’ll do that. But they forget that those people have got all the foundations, they’ve got all the building blocks. Quite often they’ve got big teams running these complicated funnels. And if you’re not at that stage yet and if you’re looking for your first clients, you’re definitely not.

Then you need to start by using your existing network. And quite often if you come from corporate, that network might have been in your previous life. Well that’s okay. You can just let them know what you’re doing now. And a good way to do it is to say, hey, this is what I’m doing now. Wondering whether you might be interested or somebody that you know.

Mistake 5. You Don't Value Your Coaching Skills

So yes, you want to get the runs on the board and yes, you want to help people. But if you’re not paying yourself, if you don’t have a way to make this business make money, then it doesn’t matter what you’re going to charge, because at the end of the day, you’re not going to be here very long.

So a really great way to support this business is to think of it a bit like a toddler. You wouldn’t send a toddler out to work at the age of 2 or 6 months. So if you’ve got another way to make an income to get this up and running to get this started, then fantastic. So don’t throw at the baby with the bathwater.

Making sure that you’ve got other ways to make money as you’re building this. And then that way when you are talking to clients, you can charge the appropriate fee. You can value yourself. You can get clients that are really going to be interested in buying in. And also you’re not going to be in that needy, grabby energy because life doesn’t depend on this one client to make sure that you can pay you rent your mortgage and feed yourself.

So making sure that you do have ways to support yourself while you’re building the business. But sometimes it can take a little while, and especially while you’re getting your confidence out. So remember that you do need to be able to support yourself so that you can support your clients, because there’s nothing worse than engaging a coach that’s needy and grabby.

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Cathy Smith Coaching