April 24, 2025 • 31 mins
Not sure how to market yourself when you don’t have clients yet? In this episode, Michelle goes through 10 small steps to get started with getting clients. The emphasis is on “small” because we know that small changes over time make all the difference. You with us??
Mentioned in this episode:
Want Michelle to answer YOUR questions? Submit them here - https://HealthCoachPower.com/
April 2025's free Fullscript event - https://HealthCoachPower.com/
Free mailing list setup tutorial - https://HealthCoachPower.com/
Workshop Success training - https://healthcoachpower.com/
Want Michelle to answer YOUR questions? Submit them here - https://HealthCoachPower.com/
April 2025's free Fullscript event - https://HealthCoachPower.com/
Free mailing list setup tutorial - https://HealthCoachPower.com/
Workshop Success training - https://healthcoachpower.com/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Alright. Real quick before we start,
just a reminder of our freeupcoming session on how to turn
supplements and lab testsinto an income stream. Yes,
for health coaches. And yes,
while staying withinyour scope of practice,
I want you to join us for this freeevent so you can learn how it all works.
(00:22):
I can't wait to learn how it allworks. And all you got to do is
register@healthcoachpower.com/supplements.
That event is coming up next week.
Just a little announcement that I hadto get out of the way before we do
anything else.
So last week I was in Floridawith my boys for spring
(00:42):
break and we went to the beach andwe went to Kennedy Space Center.
Have you ever been? I've never beenthere before. I thought it was really,
really cool and I'm just a boy mom, right?I am like, all right,
we'll go to Kennedy Space Center. I haveno interest in this, but it was really,
really cool. And we evengot to see a shuttle launch.
I guess that happens every few days, butwe never saw anything like that before.
(01:06):
The boys loved it.
Now you know how Neil Armstrongsaid one small step for man
as he stepped onto the moon,like one step, no big deal,
right? Except it was a huge deal.
And today I am respondingto a question from Dasia
(01:27):
about taking small stepsforward as a health coach. Now,
Dasia texted me thisquestion, and by the way,
you can do the same ifyou're in the US or Canada.
Go to healthcoachpower.com/text and
submit your questions for an upcomingepisode. And if you're lucky,
like Dasia today,
(01:47):
maybe I will respond to youin an upcoming show. So again,
that's healthcoachpower.com/text.
So here's what she asked. Assia said,
how do you market yourself whenyou don't have any clients yet?
What are the small steps you needto get started with getting clients?
(02:08):
I just loved this idea of smallsteps because if the astronauts
were told to go run a marathonon the moon or go to the
moon and build a small town there,
that would've been too much andit wouldn't have gotten done.
But to take one step thatmade all the difference.
(02:29):
So here are 10 small steps that youcan take to start getting clients,
whether you are a brand new coach ora coach who's kind of been going in
circles for a while,
anyone can take these steps at any stageof business and you can do them like
today. How about today?
Today's a good day.It'll be a giant leap forward for you.
(02:50):
So as we go through,
tell me in the chat area if you've triedthese or if they worked really well or
if you got stuck or I would hearany of your real life responses and
experiences to all of these ideas.
That helps lend a lot of color to theepisode. So it's not just me, blah, blah,
blah,
but it's really about what's working forall of you and the questions that you
(03:11):
have.
So here we go with numberone small step you can take
is talk to people.
That's it you guys. That's all there isto it. You got a mouth, you can do it.
Conversations lead to clients,
and I'm not even talking aboutconversations with potential clients,
(03:34):
people who definitely are looking forhealth coaching and you definitely want to
work with, I mean all conversations,conversations with your neighbor,
the trainer at the gym, talkto the moms at soccer practice,
talk to the owner of the natural foodstore in your town. Talk to your kids'
teachers. It doesn't matter who,
(03:54):
you just need to start talking andyou don't even have to talk about your
business. I mean you can,but anything that comes up,
just start talking, making friends,
keeping up connections. Andhere's a really good idea,
connecting people to each other.
This is going to eitherdirectly or indirectly
(04:16):
lead you to clients. It'sall about relationships.
So much of business isabout relationships.
So here's a random example. I wastrying to think way, way, way, way,
way back in my own health coaching career,
how just talking to people like ahuman being made a big difference.
And I thought of this one.
So I used to teach a lunchtimeyoga class at a gym in Cambridge,
(04:40):
Massachusetts. And this oneguy, he would come every week.
His name was Mike and he wasn'tvery flexible and he wasn't
particularly friendly orsmiley or anything like that. So I went out of my way
to talk to him more. Actually,
I always went out of my way tochat with all of my students.
And over the course of weekend week out,
(05:00):
I found out that he worked nearby oneof the tech companies up there by MIT.
And his wife was a doctor. Well,
eventually I ran a program in myhealth coaching business and I would
always mention that in my classes,just in passing, not in a salesy way.
Anyway, he told his wife about it,she wanted in, she became a client.
(05:24):
And that's an easy example ofhow real world relationships,
and I know you have these and I knowyou could have more of these if done on
purpose. These types ofconnections lead to clients.
In fact, that woman,
she told some of her friends andthen they became clients too. So
(05:44):
you may not think that asking someoneabout where they work or how long they've
been doing yoga wouldhelp with your marketing,
but that is exactly howconnections get made.
So don't overlook it ifyou're not a chatty Kathy,
you can work your way up. Oneconversation here, one conversation there.
Who's tried this?
Who's ever had a client fall into yourlap just because you had a conversation
(06:07):
with the right person? Alright,
moving on to small step number two. Again,
small steps are the key words here.
There's lots of things youcan do to grow your business.
We talk about them week in and weekout, but everything today is like teeny.
And here's one and small step you cantake that will lead to clients is to set
(06:28):
up a way for someone tobook a call with you.
And I'm not saying this because youhave to have this fancy online system,
but I'm saying it because I knowyou know health coaches and I
know that if you don't havesome kind of system in place
for booking calls,
you're going to subconsciously use thatas a reason to not invite people to
(06:52):
book a call with you at all.You're going to think I'm not ready.
So let's just get you ready. Even ifyou don't want to talk to anybody today,
why not take this small step?
You can use a free tool like Calendly.
That's one of the tools that I teachmy fast trackers to use actually.
And I use it myself. I have for many,many years. It's real easy to set up.
(07:14):
It integrates with your Google calendaror whatever calendars you have.
And this way if you find yourselfin a conversation with someone who's
maybe interested in working on their ownhealth issues or maybe someone who has
their own business and you want to setup a time to hear more about it and
support each other, I mean, yes,you can go get a tea together,
(07:35):
but what if they don't live in your town?
Make it easy for someoneto get on your calendar,
have an easy link to share with them.You could say Here,
book a time on mycalendar. It's very simple,
it's very professional and it's free.
Anyone have a link already who hasset something up with Calendly,
(07:56):
maybe with Acuity? That'sanother popular one.
It's something anyone can do.
I don't care if you're still inschool to become a health coach,
it doesn't matter. Justgo to one of these sites,
create a free account and you'llbe up and running. All right,
number three, here's a step thatyou can definitely do today.
(08:17):
Why not tell your inner circle thatyou're accepting new clients at
an intro rate. You're notgoing up to friends, family,
and coworkers saying you want to be myclient. Please, please be my client.
We're not doing that. We're not begging,we're not putting them on the spot,
but you're letting them know and youcan even be really transparent with them
(08:38):
that maybe you're feeling nervous becausethis is all new. I know when I was
starting my business, people wouldsay, well, how's your business going?
And I never knew whatto say. You could say,
well actually right nowI'm kind of nervous,
but I'm accepting my firstclients at a special intro rate.
And you could say, because I'm justgetting started and I'm so excited.
(09:00):
And maybe you're going to do thatfor your first five paying clients,
you're going to offer some specialintro package that might be all the
motivation that someone needs toperk up and say, well actually,
I've been meaning to talk to you.
I can't tell you the number of timesthat somebody would hear me talk about my
business and go, I've got to talkto you about. Or maybe they'll say,
(09:24):
oh, well actually I wastelling my sister about you.
So just saying that youhave this intro offer,
a reason for them to then tell theirsister they've been meaning to do it now
they'll actually go do it. And suddenlyyou might find yourself giving out that
link to your calendar that wejust talked about. And if not,
and if nobody bites, no harm, no foul,
(09:47):
you're just looking for lowhanging fruit in the beginning,
the people in your circle that mayalready be interested so that you
can get experience andthey can get a great deal.
And I love the idea of an intro ratebecause it allows you to ease into
asking for money.
I recommend this over doing anythingfor free with friends and family.
(10:11):
Friends and family can already be kindof difficult to work with because they
don't know you as a health coach.
And so when they're paying nowyou're putting yourself into that
position of health coachprofessional and they are actually,
there's some exchange ofenergy with that money.
So even a small intro rate is betterthan doing it for free. And this is a
(10:33):
strategy that we use insideFastTrack all the time.
You have to get used to asking formoney and accepting money and you
have to build confidence.So start with a smaller,
lower priced package at thatintro rate and it's a win-win
for everybody. Let's see, Jamie saysthat she uses square appointments.
(10:55):
I have never heard of Square being usedfor that, so that's really interesting.
There's always new stuff coming out.
So anything that you can use to bookwhere people can book a time if you will
work. Now, I did wantto mention about that,
that if you're on practice better,
I wouldn't use that for a casualappointment. If you're like, oh,
(11:15):
maybe we can collaborateyou and a yoga teacher,
you and a trainer from the gym,
I wouldn't try to make them book throughpractice better because that's a client
management tool. When you're just lookingto have a networking type meeting,
it doesn't belong there. So that's whenyou would use something like Calendly,
just a way for people to hop on yournormal calendar, not your client calendar.
(11:39):
Okay, what else can we do today?Small, not too scary steps.
How about this?
Can you get testimonialsor case studies from
anyone that you've workedwith before? Practice clients,
your first couple clients, your bestfriend who wasn't technically a client,
but boy you really helped her clearup that eczema. Whatever it is,
(12:03):
can you ask them for their feedbackand plan to share their results
with their permission? This is soimportant because social proof,
that's what we call it, social proof.
People can see your testimonials or evenwhen you're talking about your clients,
even just being able torefer to somebody's success story in the context of a
(12:23):
conversation, the personon the other end goes, oh,
this person works with clients.Sounds like they do a really good job.
It doesn't take much. So real quick,
and I think we've talked abouttestimonials before here on the show,
but I have always found that the easiestway to get testimonials is to actually
write them myself and thenoffer it to that person and
(12:46):
say, can I use this as is?
Or would you like to make any edits?
Would it be okay with you if I use thisin my future marketing materials or
would you like to edit it? And sometimesthey'll change one or two words,
but for the most part, everyone hasalways said to me, yeah, it looks good.
They don't care. They don't have timeto think about it. If you said, Hey,
(13:08):
could you write me a thoughtfultestimonial? They're good people,
they want to do it,
but they're busy and then it just doesn'thappen. So that's just a little tip
from me to you on gettingit done. And remember,
it doesn't have to be someone whois a strict paying client of yours.
It could be anyone thatyou've helped in any capacity,
especially when you're just getting going,
(13:29):
you want them to be able to say somethingabout the results that they achieved
as a result of working withyou or communicating with you.
Alright, let's move on here.
We're moving on to my favoritestep for you to take today
because for some reason you guys will putit off and put it off and I'll talk to
(13:50):
you a year from now and I'll say,have you started your email list?
And you'll say, no, notyet. And I don't know why.
This is another one of those thingsthat is entirely free to get set
up with.
It's just one of these things you gotto do. You got to get in place in order
for the rest of your business to buildon it. I could not have a website,
(14:13):
not have any social media,
not have any client management toolsor online course tools or anything like
that. And I would be fine, butif I didn't have an email list,
I'd have no business. I neverwould've had a business.
So please find and set upa free tool where you can
start to collect emails.
(14:34):
Now I've got a free tutorial that walksyou through exactly how to do this using
my preferred email service for healthcoaches. And if you want that tutorial,
you can grab it for free.
It's at healthcoachpower.com/mailing.
It goes step by step, click here,click there, boom, boom, boom.
(14:56):
Before you know it,
you're going to be all set up and readyto rock and you're going to feel so
accomplished. I did the thing. Andwhen Michelle asks me a year from now,
if I set up my mailinglist, I can say yes.
If you don't have any names to put onyour mailing list yet, that's okay.
Just get the system set up.It's the first small step.
Here's the next one though.
(15:17):
So if you got your email list set upalready or if you took advantage of the
tutorial that I just shared with you,
another very small step that you cantake that actually can make pretty big
difference is to ask people
if they'd like to be on your list.I mean, it really is that easy.
And it's funny,
I was preparing this episode andthinking about this and then I was just
(15:41):
going through my own personal Facebookfeed and came across an old friend
of mine.
We used to both teach yoga up inBoston and she had posted something
about how she's doing something new inher business and kind of describing,
and I was like, oh,
that's so interesting. And then she posteda link and said how she'll be sending
out a newsletter and you better believeI went and checked it out because I was
(16:05):
interested in what she was offering.And of course, because I know her,
I was interested. You have peoplein your life like that too.
Why not just ask? So this canbe something like she did.
She actually just posted onFacebook. She could do it that way.
It could be as simple as a textmessage or a direct message,
(16:26):
like one-to-one to an individual. Hey,
I'm going to be sharing tipsaround health and wellness. Hey,
I've got some events coming up this yearin my health coaching business. Hey,
I know one time we had aconversation about your arthritis.
I've got some stuff coming up Ithink you'll be interested in.
Would you like to be on my mailing list?
They're going to say yes or they're goingto say no or they're not going to say
(16:49):
anything.
But I will tell you that this takesvery little time and the payoff
can be pretty big. Daniella,
who's one of our live spring fast trackersgoing through the program right now,
she said that just by asking her circleof contacts if they'd like to be on her
mailing list,
she went from basically no listat all to 20 new subscribers
(17:11):
in the first week.
So I think it's just the firstand easiest step to take.
We all start somewhere.
I remember when my mailing list was aspreadsheet with just a couple names on it
too, and now thousands and thousandsand thousands of people later,
that feels like a lifetime ago. You'llget there. It starts with just saying,
(17:33):
Hey, doing this thing,
thought you might be interested. Want tobe on my mailing list? You never know.
What do you think about that?Doable. If you're here live,
I know I can see you guys are herelive with me. Just say doable.
If anything I've said so far in thisepisode sounds like something you could
probably do today. Maybeyou could put aside 10,
(17:53):
15 minutes and get one or twoof these done. Small steps.
Alright, moving right along here.
This one I will admit is a littlebit bigger than some of the others.
So depending where you'reat in your business,
some of those other steps might need tocome first. Oh good, Amber said doable.
(18:15):
And Jamie says she's done a few ofthese before and they're doable. Great.
Does anyone feel these are not doable?That's okay. I won't take offense.
We work it out.
You know what we do with steps?You'll do this with your clients too.
If it's too big, it's too much. We justbreak it down into smaller ones. Boom,
boom, boom, boom. You knowhow to do it. Alright,
so the next one I was going to sharewith you, it might be like that,
(18:36):
but maybe this is a good one for Jamie.I don't know if you've done this one.
You guys workshops.Workshops are where it's at,
especially in the earlystage of your business.
You don't have much tech know-how,
you don't have a lot oftools or systems or things.
Don't worry about the online marketingfunnels and all that kind of garbage.
(18:57):
Don't be running Facebook ads,it's not going to get you anywhere.
What's going to get yousomewhere real, real easily?
Put yourself in a room with people andtalk about what you know and love help
people. This is why you got into thiswork, right? So when you hold a workshop,
you're just going to pick asimple topic, like I said,
something that you know could talkabout for like 30 minutes straight.
(19:19):
And you don't have to,when you do a workshop,
there's lots of opportunities to let theparticipants talk to each other or do
a group share so you're reallynot talking the whole time.
But that's just a good gauge. Ifyou know off the top of your head,
you could talk about somethingthat long that could work for you.
And if you need help withthe whole workshop process,
(19:42):
it's the kind of thing that you'regoing to want to do over and over again.
You have to know how to book workshopsso that you're not talking to an empty
room.
You want to put yourself places wherethere's going to be an audience. You have
to know what to do duringthe workshop. Of course,
you want to know how to follow up afterthe workshop and funnel these people.
Not email funnel, not onlinefunnel, just like real life.
(20:05):
Move these people from being workshopparticipants towards booking a call with
you and potentially becoming a client.
That whole process I haveoutlined in a very easy,
affordable workshop that's availableon my websites called Workshop Success.
So if you want me to stepyou through all those pieces,
it's at healthcoachpower.com/workshop.But man,
(20:28):
I would do so many workshops inthe early years of my business
because it's not that hard. Iknow it can feel like, oh my God,
I've never done this before.
But when you compare it to doing thingsthat require a bunch of technology,
more complicated marketing, I mean,
this is just you walking into a roomand let's go back to number one,
(20:49):
talking to people. That's all it is.You're just formalizing talking to people.
Jamie says she has her first workshopscheduled next month. Congratulations.
That's fantastic. Book more.
I don't know how long it tookyou to get that one set up,
but I feel like the stickingpoint with workshops is that
(21:09):
you have to wait for the venue to say yes.
You have to wait for the owner ofthat yoga studio to get back to you.
So don't wait to reach out becauseit's only going to take longer.
Even if you just send, and I havethis all outlined in Workshop Success,
an email that you can send justto test the waters, just to say,
(21:31):
would this be a possible venue for me?
And that way you can get the ballrolling sooner than later. Alright,
what other questions do wehave here? Amber said workshop.
Should they be paid or shouldthey be free? And how to decide.
I talk about that inside workshop success.
The short answer iseither it doesn't matter.
Whatever's going to getpeople there. Suko says,
(21:54):
do you have landing pagerecommendations for,
what do you mean by that?
Like a service for landing pagesor a landing page For what purpose?
There's so many different kinds of landingpages. Maybe we'll come back to that.
Alright, so we just talkedabout holding a workshop.
Remember that was a little biton the bigger, smaller step size.
(22:15):
I know I'm going to just take it downa notch. For those of you who are like,
whoa, Michelle, that was toomuch for me. How about this?
How about just hosting a walkingclub in your neighborhood
or a book club or a meditation sit or
anything like this?
(22:35):
Bring people to in yourcommunity in just a low
key wellness focused kind of way.Something that you might have
done or maybe you have done evenif you weren't a health coach.
You don't have to go into itwith a sales pitch. In fact,
it's better if you don't.
You want to build connectionand trust without a whole
(22:58):
salesy vibe going on.
You just want to become the person thatpeople think of when they think about
their health. Because if you'rein a walking club with people,
you could just say, Hey,even here in my town,
I like to go walk bythe river. I'm so lucky.
I live right by the Hudson River and Ilove to go walk up and down the river.
There's other people in thetown who love to do that too.
(23:19):
What if I just put something outon our local next door app or we
have a local Facebookgroup or whatever it is,
or even just invited friends andwe're walking together a more
likely to get it done, morelikely to go for the walk,
be have more fun while we're at it.See, now you're talking to people.
Remember that one. And when that happens,
(23:41):
you're more likely to starttalking about health topics.
You are walking presumably for yourhealth and when things come up, oh wow.
Now you have yourself ina conversation about that.
Great segue to someone finding outabout your health coaching business,
finding out that, hey, she reallyknows a whole lot about X, Y, Z topic.
(24:02):
That's it. You don't have to be salesy,you just have to talk to people.
So this is a way of organizing agroup where you can do exactly that
or a book club. How funis that going to be?
And this is not marketing. This isjust like you showing up in the world,
helping people, connecting people.
All good things are going to come out ofthis, I promise, promise, promise. Oh,
(24:26):
okay.
Let's go back to that question. Ko saidfor the purpose of registering workshop
participants.
So this one I'm going to answer alittle bit sideways because when you're
holding your workshops,
the idea is that you're puttingyourself in front of someone else's
audience. If you hold your ownworkshop, you know who you can invite.
(24:47):
Your same circle of friends that you
already told them about your intro offer,
you already asked them if theywant to be on your mailing list.
They already know about you. Youwant new people to know about you.
So typically, if you're goingto do a workshop somewhere,
they are going to collect theregistrations. Typically, not always,
but that would often happen anytimeI ever held a workshop at like a yoga
(25:11):
studio, they're collectingregistrations for their own workshops.
So that takes care of that.If you're doing it yourself,
there's a hundred different ways to do it.You can just set up a landing page
through your email service. So if youdon't have your email list set up,
you would do that first and then youcould create a landing page from there.
That's very straightforward.
(25:33):
And I've also heard of a lot ofcoaches doing well using something like
Eventbrite or a meetup group or various
things online that're already setup to handle event registrations.
So those are all ideas for you,
but do try to set things up witha venue that's going to do that
part for you because that means thatthey are used to holding workshops,
(25:57):
which means they're more likely to havean audience of people that are going to
be there. Alrighty, so weare down to number nine.
We are just whipping through thesetoday. So I hope you got a couple ideas.
And these are not beforehand new ideas,
but what are they small, doable steps.Yes.
So number nine is share your story.
(26:21):
And you can do thisumpteen different ways.
It might be just you talking to oneindividual and sharing your story today.
It might be you writing up awhole blog post or an email
or posting something on social media.
You want to get real comfortablewith your story though,
because people need to get to know you.People need to feel like can trust you.
(26:44):
And it could be about your personalhealth journey or why you became a health
coach. Something brought you tohealth coaching. And for many of us,
it's our own health issues.
And I know I've even recordedepisodes on this podcast about my
story and how I ended uphere. Real stories resonate.
Real stories connect you.
(27:06):
And sometimes you have to hone yourstory because it's in your head,
it's your lived experience.And you might think, oh Michelle,
I don't have a story to tell. Talkto someone. Tell 'em your story.
See what questions they askyou. See what fascinates them.
I think it's an iterative process.
So by the time you have to tellyour story on a stage somewhere
(27:26):
or write your book or whateveryou're going to do in the future,
you have an angle on your story that'sreally, really interesting to people.
But you can start todayby sharing your story in
whatever way is most doable for you.
And then number 10,
small steps is to doeverything we just talked about
(27:50):
again. Yep, you heard me.
You can't do just one workshop,
you can't share your story one time.
Pretty much everythingwe talked about today,
you're going to repeat oryou're going to iterate on.
If you set up your mailing list today,
great. You don't have toset it up again tomorrow,
but tomorrow maybe you start addingnames and the day after that you maybe
(28:13):
you're going to send your firstemail and the week after that,
you're going to send your second email.So everything that we've talked about,
it just builds on itself.
These are not one and done ideas.
So I laugh every time a health coach says,
but I post it on Instagram and I stilldidn't get any bites for health coaching.
(28:34):
No duh. Do we still saythat? My kids asked me,
mom, what's some of the slang fromwhen you were our age? And I said,
we used to say no, duh.
And then we'd get in trouble because wesay it to a parent or something and then
they would get very mad.But anyway, no, duh,
that one Instagram post didn'tbring clients your way. Keep
(28:55):
going even when it feelsslow. Another small step,
another small step, another smallstep. That's the only way to do this.
That's the only way to do anything new.
So thank you so much for joining me today.
If there's anything I mentionedin this episode that you're like,
what was that link again, Michelle?
Of course you can just re-listen to thisepisode or just go to the show notes on
(29:18):
my website. We'll have themall listed out for you.
So you could set up your mailing list.
You can check out Workshop Successand you can text message me.
We will repeat this one because if youhave a question you'd like me to answer
in a future show, this one's important.
Go to healthcoachpower.com/text.
Can't wait to hear from you and I'llsee you all next week. Take care,
everybody.
Alright. Real quick before we start,
just a reminder of our freeupcoming session on how to turn
supplements and lab testsinto an income stream. Yes,
for health coaches. And yes,
while staying withinyour scope of practice,
I want you to join us for this freeevent so you can learn how it all works.
(00:22):
I can't wait to learn how it allworks. And all you got to do is
register@healthcoachpower.com/supplements.
That event is coming up next week.
Just a little announcement that I hadto get out of the way before we do
anything else.
So last week I was in Floridawith my boys for spring
(00:42):
break and we went to the beach andwe went to Kennedy Space Center.
Have you ever been? I've never beenthere before. I thought it was really,
really cool and I'm just a boy mom, right?I am like, all right,
we'll go to Kennedy Space Center. I haveno interest in this, but it was really,
really cool. And we evengot to see a shuttle launch.
I guess that happens every few days, butwe never saw anything like that before.
(01:06):
The boys loved it.
Now you know how Neil Armstrongsaid one small step for man
as he stepped onto the moon,like one step, no big deal,
right? Except it was a huge deal.
And today I am respondingto a question from Dasia
(01:27):
about taking small stepsforward as a health coach. Now,
Dasia texted me thisquestion, and by the way,
you can do the same ifyou're in the US or Canada.
Go to healthcoachpower.com/text and
submit your questions for an upcomingepisode. And if you're lucky,
like Dasia today,
(01:47):
maybe I will respond to youin an upcoming show. So again,
that's healthcoachpower.com/text.
So here's what she asked. Assia said,
how do you market yourself whenyou don't have any clients yet?
What are the small steps you needto get started with getting clients?
(02:08):
I just loved this idea of smallsteps because if the astronauts
were told to go run a marathonon the moon or go to the
moon and build a small town there,
that would've been too much andit wouldn't have gotten done.
But to take one step thatmade all the difference.
(02:29):
So here are 10 small steps that youcan take to start getting clients,
whether you are a brand new coach ora coach who's kind of been going in
circles for a while,
anyone can take these steps at any stageof business and you can do them like
today. How about today?
Today's a good day.It'll be a giant leap forward for you.
(02:50):
So as we go through,
tell me in the chat area if you've triedthese or if they worked really well or
if you got stuck or I would hearany of your real life responses and
experiences to all of these ideas.
That helps lend a lot of color to theepisode. So it's not just me, blah, blah,
blah,
but it's really about what's working forall of you and the questions that you
(03:11):
have.
So here we go with numberone small step you can take
is talk to people.
That's it you guys. That's all there isto it. You got a mouth, you can do it.
Conversations lead to clients,
and I'm not even talking aboutconversations with potential clients,
(03:34):
people who definitely are looking forhealth coaching and you definitely want to
work with, I mean all conversations,conversations with your neighbor,
the trainer at the gym, talkto the moms at soccer practice,
talk to the owner of the natural foodstore in your town. Talk to your kids'
teachers. It doesn't matter who,
(03:54):
you just need to start talking andyou don't even have to talk about your
business. I mean you can,but anything that comes up,
just start talking, making friends,
keeping up connections. Andhere's a really good idea,
connecting people to each other.
This is going to eitherdirectly or indirectly
(04:16):
lead you to clients. It'sall about relationships.
So much of business isabout relationships.
So here's a random example. I wastrying to think way, way, way, way,
way back in my own health coaching career,
how just talking to people like ahuman being made a big difference.
And I thought of this one.
So I used to teach a lunchtimeyoga class at a gym in Cambridge,
(04:40):
Massachusetts. And this oneguy, he would come every week.
His name was Mike and he wasn'tvery flexible and he wasn't
particularly friendly orsmiley or anything like that. So I went out of my way
to talk to him more. Actually,
I always went out of my way tochat with all of my students.
And over the course of weekend week out,
(05:00):
I found out that he worked nearby oneof the tech companies up there by MIT.
And his wife was a doctor. Well,
eventually I ran a program in myhealth coaching business and I would
always mention that in my classes,just in passing, not in a salesy way.
Anyway, he told his wife about it,she wanted in, she became a client.
(05:24):
And that's an easy example ofhow real world relationships,
and I know you have these and I knowyou could have more of these if done on
purpose. These types ofconnections lead to clients.
In fact, that woman,
she told some of her friends andthen they became clients too. So
(05:44):
you may not think that asking someoneabout where they work or how long they've
been doing yoga wouldhelp with your marketing,
but that is exactly howconnections get made.
So don't overlook it ifyou're not a chatty Kathy,
you can work your way up. Oneconversation here, one conversation there.
Who's tried this?
Who's ever had a client fall into yourlap just because you had a conversation
(06:07):
with the right person? Alright,
moving on to small step number two. Again,
small steps are the key words here.
There's lots of things youcan do to grow your business.
We talk about them week in and weekout, but everything today is like teeny.
And here's one and small step you cantake that will lead to clients is to set
(06:28):
up a way for someone tobook a call with you.
And I'm not saying this because youhave to have this fancy online system,
but I'm saying it because I knowyou know health coaches and I
know that if you don't havesome kind of system in place
for booking calls,
you're going to subconsciously use thatas a reason to not invite people to
(06:52):
book a call with you at all.You're going to think I'm not ready.
So let's just get you ready. Even ifyou don't want to talk to anybody today,
why not take this small step?
You can use a free tool like Calendly.
That's one of the tools that I teachmy fast trackers to use actually.
And I use it myself. I have for many,many years. It's real easy to set up.
(07:14):
It integrates with your Google calendaror whatever calendars you have.
And this way if you find yourselfin a conversation with someone who's
maybe interested in working on their ownhealth issues or maybe someone who has
their own business and you want to setup a time to hear more about it and
support each other, I mean, yes,you can go get a tea together,
(07:35):
but what if they don't live in your town?
Make it easy for someoneto get on your calendar,
have an easy link to share with them.You could say Here,
book a time on mycalendar. It's very simple,
it's very professional and it's free.
Anyone have a link already who hasset something up with Calendly,
(07:56):
maybe with Acuity? That'sanother popular one.
It's something anyone can do.
I don't care if you're still inschool to become a health coach,
it doesn't matter. Justgo to one of these sites,
create a free account and you'llbe up and running. All right,
number three, here's a step thatyou can definitely do today.
(08:17):
Why not tell your inner circle thatyou're accepting new clients at
an intro rate. You're notgoing up to friends, family,
and coworkers saying you want to be myclient. Please, please be my client.
We're not doing that. We're not begging,we're not putting them on the spot,
but you're letting them know and youcan even be really transparent with them
(08:38):
that maybe you're feeling nervous becausethis is all new. I know when I was
starting my business, people wouldsay, well, how's your business going?
And I never knew whatto say. You could say,
well actually right nowI'm kind of nervous,
but I'm accepting my firstclients at a special intro rate.
And you could say, because I'm justgetting started and I'm so excited.
(09:00):
And maybe you're going to do thatfor your first five paying clients,
you're going to offer some specialintro package that might be all the
motivation that someone needs toperk up and say, well actually,
I've been meaning to talk to you.
I can't tell you the number of timesthat somebody would hear me talk about my
business and go, I've got to talkto you about. Or maybe they'll say,
(09:24):
oh, well actually I wastelling my sister about you.
So just saying that youhave this intro offer,
a reason for them to then tell theirsister they've been meaning to do it now
they'll actually go do it. And suddenlyyou might find yourself giving out that
link to your calendar that wejust talked about. And if not,
and if nobody bites, no harm, no foul,
(09:47):
you're just looking for lowhanging fruit in the beginning,
the people in your circle that mayalready be interested so that you
can get experience andthey can get a great deal.
And I love the idea of an intro ratebecause it allows you to ease into
asking for money.
I recommend this over doing anythingfor free with friends and family.
(10:11):
Friends and family can already be kindof difficult to work with because they
don't know you as a health coach.
And so when they're paying nowyou're putting yourself into that
position of health coachprofessional and they are actually,
there's some exchange ofenergy with that money.
So even a small intro rate is betterthan doing it for free. And this is a
(10:33):
strategy that we use insideFastTrack all the time.
You have to get used to asking formoney and accepting money and you
have to build confidence.So start with a smaller,
lower priced package at thatintro rate and it's a win-win
for everybody. Let's see, Jamie saysthat she uses square appointments.
(10:55):
I have never heard of Square being usedfor that, so that's really interesting.
There's always new stuff coming out.
So anything that you can use to bookwhere people can book a time if you will
work. Now, I did wantto mention about that,
that if you're on practice better,
I wouldn't use that for a casualappointment. If you're like, oh,
(11:15):
maybe we can collaborateyou and a yoga teacher,
you and a trainer from the gym,
I wouldn't try to make them book throughpractice better because that's a client
management tool. When you're just lookingto have a networking type meeting,
it doesn't belong there. So that's whenyou would use something like Calendly,
just a way for people to hop on yournormal calendar, not your client calendar.
(11:39):
Okay, what else can we do today?Small, not too scary steps.
How about this?
Can you get testimonialsor case studies from
anyone that you've workedwith before? Practice clients,
your first couple clients, your bestfriend who wasn't technically a client,
but boy you really helped her clearup that eczema. Whatever it is,
(12:03):
can you ask them for their feedbackand plan to share their results
with their permission? This is soimportant because social proof,
that's what we call it, social proof.
People can see your testimonials or evenwhen you're talking about your clients,
even just being able torefer to somebody's success story in the context of a
(12:23):
conversation, the personon the other end goes, oh,
this person works with clients.Sounds like they do a really good job.
It doesn't take much. So real quick,
and I think we've talked abouttestimonials before here on the show,
but I have always found that the easiestway to get testimonials is to actually
write them myself and thenoffer it to that person and
(12:46):
say, can I use this as is?
Or would you like to make any edits?
Would it be okay with you if I use thisin my future marketing materials or
would you like to edit it? And sometimesthey'll change one or two words,
but for the most part, everyone hasalways said to me, yeah, it looks good.
They don't care. They don't have timeto think about it. If you said, Hey,
(13:08):
could you write me a thoughtfultestimonial? They're good people,
they want to do it,
but they're busy and then it just doesn'thappen. So that's just a little tip
from me to you on gettingit done. And remember,
it doesn't have to be someone whois a strict paying client of yours.
It could be anyone thatyou've helped in any capacity,
especially when you're just getting going,
(13:29):
you want them to be able to say somethingabout the results that they achieved
as a result of working withyou or communicating with you.
Alright, let's move on here.
We're moving on to my favoritestep for you to take today
because for some reason you guys will putit off and put it off and I'll talk to
(13:50):
you a year from now and I'll say,have you started your email list?
And you'll say, no, notyet. And I don't know why.
This is another one of those thingsthat is entirely free to get set
up with.
It's just one of these things you gotto do. You got to get in place in order
for the rest of your business to buildon it. I could not have a website,
(14:13):
not have any social media,
not have any client management toolsor online course tools or anything like
that. And I would be fine, butif I didn't have an email list,
I'd have no business. I neverwould've had a business.
So please find and set upa free tool where you can
start to collect emails.
(14:34):
Now I've got a free tutorial that walksyou through exactly how to do this using
my preferred email service for healthcoaches. And if you want that tutorial,
you can grab it for free.
It's at healthcoachpower.com/mailing.
It goes step by step, click here,click there, boom, boom, boom.
(14:56):
Before you know it,
you're going to be all set up and readyto rock and you're going to feel so
accomplished. I did the thing. Andwhen Michelle asks me a year from now,
if I set up my mailinglist, I can say yes.
If you don't have any names to put onyour mailing list yet, that's okay.
Just get the system set up.It's the first small step.
Here's the next one though.
(15:17):
So if you got your email list set upalready or if you took advantage of the
tutorial that I just shared with you,
another very small step that you cantake that actually can make pretty big
difference is to ask people
if they'd like to be on your list.I mean, it really is that easy.
And it's funny,
I was preparing this episode andthinking about this and then I was just
(15:41):
going through my own personal Facebookfeed and came across an old friend
of mine.
We used to both teach yoga up inBoston and she had posted something
about how she's doing something new inher business and kind of describing,
and I was like, oh,
that's so interesting. And then she posteda link and said how she'll be sending
out a newsletter and you better believeI went and checked it out because I was
(16:05):
interested in what she was offering.And of course, because I know her,
I was interested. You have peoplein your life like that too.
Why not just ask? So this canbe something like she did.
She actually just posted onFacebook. She could do it that way.
It could be as simple as a textmessage or a direct message,
(16:26):
like one-to-one to an individual. Hey,
I'm going to be sharing tipsaround health and wellness. Hey,
I've got some events coming up this yearin my health coaching business. Hey,
I know one time we had aconversation about your arthritis.
I've got some stuff coming up Ithink you'll be interested in.
Would you like to be on my mailing list?
They're going to say yes or they're goingto say no or they're not going to say
(16:49):
anything.
But I will tell you that this takesvery little time and the payoff
can be pretty big. Daniella,
who's one of our live spring fast trackersgoing through the program right now,
she said that just by asking her circleof contacts if they'd like to be on her
mailing list,
she went from basically no listat all to 20 new subscribers
(17:11):
in the first week.
So I think it's just the firstand easiest step to take.
We all start somewhere.
I remember when my mailing list was aspreadsheet with just a couple names on it
too, and now thousands and thousandsand thousands of people later,
that feels like a lifetime ago. You'llget there. It starts with just saying,
(17:33):
Hey, doing this thing,
thought you might be interested. Want tobe on my mailing list? You never know.
What do you think about that?Doable. If you're here live,
I know I can see you guys are herelive with me. Just say doable.
If anything I've said so far in thisepisode sounds like something you could
probably do today. Maybeyou could put aside 10,
(17:53):
15 minutes and get one or twoof these done. Small steps.
Alright, moving right along here.
This one I will admit is a littlebit bigger than some of the others.
So depending where you'reat in your business,
some of those other steps might need tocome first. Oh good, Amber said doable.
(18:15):
And Jamie says she's done a few ofthese before and they're doable. Great.
Does anyone feel these are not doable?That's okay. I won't take offense.
We work it out.
You know what we do with steps?You'll do this with your clients too.
If it's too big, it's too much. We justbreak it down into smaller ones. Boom,
boom, boom, boom. You knowhow to do it. Alright,
so the next one I was going to sharewith you, it might be like that,
(18:36):
but maybe this is a good one for Jamie.I don't know if you've done this one.
You guys workshops.Workshops are where it's at,
especially in the earlystage of your business.
You don't have much tech know-how,
you don't have a lot oftools or systems or things.
Don't worry about the online marketingfunnels and all that kind of garbage.
(18:57):
Don't be running Facebook ads,it's not going to get you anywhere.
What's going to get yousomewhere real, real easily?
Put yourself in a room with people andtalk about what you know and love help
people. This is why you got into thiswork, right? So when you hold a workshop,
you're just going to pick asimple topic, like I said,
something that you know could talkabout for like 30 minutes straight.
(19:19):
And you don't have to,when you do a workshop,
there's lots of opportunities to let theparticipants talk to each other or do
a group share so you're reallynot talking the whole time.
But that's just a good gauge. Ifyou know off the top of your head,
you could talk about somethingthat long that could work for you.
And if you need help withthe whole workshop process,
(19:42):
it's the kind of thing that you'regoing to want to do over and over again.
You have to know how to book workshopsso that you're not talking to an empty
room.
You want to put yourself places wherethere's going to be an audience. You have
to know what to do duringthe workshop. Of course,
you want to know how to follow up afterthe workshop and funnel these people.
Not email funnel, not onlinefunnel, just like real life.
(20:05):
Move these people from being workshopparticipants towards booking a call with
you and potentially becoming a client.
That whole process I haveoutlined in a very easy,
affordable workshop that's availableon my websites called Workshop Success.
So if you want me to stepyou through all those pieces,
it's at healthcoachpower.com/workshop.But man,
(20:28):
I would do so many workshops inthe early years of my business
because it's not that hard. Iknow it can feel like, oh my God,
I've never done this before.
But when you compare it to doing thingsthat require a bunch of technology,
more complicated marketing, I mean,
this is just you walking into a roomand let's go back to number one,
(20:49):
talking to people. That's all it is.You're just formalizing talking to people.
Jamie says she has her first workshopscheduled next month. Congratulations.
That's fantastic. Book more.
I don't know how long it tookyou to get that one set up,
but I feel like the stickingpoint with workshops is that
(21:09):
you have to wait for the venue to say yes.
You have to wait for the owner ofthat yoga studio to get back to you.
So don't wait to reach out becauseit's only going to take longer.
Even if you just send, and I havethis all outlined in Workshop Success,
an email that you can send justto test the waters, just to say,
(21:31):
would this be a possible venue for me?
And that way you can get the ballrolling sooner than later. Alright,
what other questions do wehave here? Amber said workshop.
Should they be paid or shouldthey be free? And how to decide.
I talk about that inside workshop success.
The short answer iseither it doesn't matter.
Whatever's going to getpeople there. Suko says,
(21:54):
do you have landing pagerecommendations for,
what do you mean by that?
Like a service for landing pagesor a landing page For what purpose?
There's so many different kinds of landingpages. Maybe we'll come back to that.
Alright, so we just talkedabout holding a workshop.
Remember that was a little biton the bigger, smaller step size.
(22:15):
I know I'm going to just take it downa notch. For those of you who are like,
whoa, Michelle, that was toomuch for me. How about this?
How about just hosting a walkingclub in your neighborhood
or a book club or a meditation sit or
anything like this?
(22:35):
Bring people to in yourcommunity in just a low
key wellness focused kind of way.Something that you might have
done or maybe you have done evenif you weren't a health coach.
You don't have to go into itwith a sales pitch. In fact,
it's better if you don't.
You want to build connectionand trust without a whole
(22:58):
salesy vibe going on.
You just want to become the person thatpeople think of when they think about
their health. Because if you'rein a walking club with people,
you could just say, Hey,even here in my town,
I like to go walk bythe river. I'm so lucky.
I live right by the Hudson River and Ilove to go walk up and down the river.
There's other people in thetown who love to do that too.
(23:19):
What if I just put something outon our local next door app or we
have a local Facebookgroup or whatever it is,
or even just invited friends andwe're walking together a more
likely to get it done, morelikely to go for the walk,
be have more fun while we're at it.See, now you're talking to people.
Remember that one. And when that happens,
(23:41):
you're more likely to starttalking about health topics.
You are walking presumably for yourhealth and when things come up, oh wow.
Now you have yourself ina conversation about that.
Great segue to someone finding outabout your health coaching business,
finding out that, hey, she reallyknows a whole lot about X, Y, Z topic.
(24:02):
That's it. You don't have to be salesy,you just have to talk to people.
So this is a way of organizing agroup where you can do exactly that
or a book club. How funis that going to be?
And this is not marketing. This isjust like you showing up in the world,
helping people, connecting people.
All good things are going to come out ofthis, I promise, promise, promise. Oh,
(24:26):
okay.
Let's go back to that question. Ko saidfor the purpose of registering workshop
participants.
So this one I'm going to answer alittle bit sideways because when you're
holding your workshops,
the idea is that you're puttingyourself in front of someone else's
audience. If you hold your ownworkshop, you know who you can invite.
(24:47):
Your same circle of friends that you
already told them about your intro offer,
you already asked them if theywant to be on your mailing list.
They already know about you. Youwant new people to know about you.
So typically, if you're goingto do a workshop somewhere,
they are going to collect theregistrations. Typically, not always,
but that would often happen anytimeI ever held a workshop at like a yoga
(25:11):
studio, they're collectingregistrations for their own workshops.
So that takes care of that.If you're doing it yourself,
there's a hundred different ways to do it.You can just set up a landing page
through your email service. So if youdon't have your email list set up,
you would do that first and then youcould create a landing page from there.
That's very straightforward.
(25:33):
And I've also heard of a lot ofcoaches doing well using something like
Eventbrite or a meetup group or various
things online that're already setup to handle event registrations.
So those are all ideas for you,
but do try to set things up witha venue that's going to do that
part for you because that means thatthey are used to holding workshops,
(25:57):
which means they're more likely to havean audience of people that are going to
be there. Alrighty, so weare down to number nine.
We are just whipping through thesetoday. So I hope you got a couple ideas.
And these are not beforehand new ideas,
but what are they small, doable steps.Yes.
So number nine is share your story.
(26:21):
And you can do thisumpteen different ways.
It might be just you talking to oneindividual and sharing your story today.
It might be you writing up awhole blog post or an email
or posting something on social media.
You want to get real comfortablewith your story though,
because people need to get to know you.People need to feel like can trust you.
(26:44):
And it could be about your personalhealth journey or why you became a health
coach. Something brought you tohealth coaching. And for many of us,
it's our own health issues.
And I know I've even recordedepisodes on this podcast about my
story and how I ended uphere. Real stories resonate.
Real stories connect you.
(27:06):
And sometimes you have to hone yourstory because it's in your head,
it's your lived experience.And you might think, oh Michelle,
I don't have a story to tell. Talkto someone. Tell 'em your story.
See what questions they askyou. See what fascinates them.
I think it's an iterative process.
So by the time you have to tellyour story on a stage somewhere
(27:26):
or write your book or whateveryou're going to do in the future,
you have an angle on your story that'sreally, really interesting to people.
But you can start todayby sharing your story in
whatever way is most doable for you.
And then number 10,
small steps is to doeverything we just talked about
(27:50):
again. Yep, you heard me.
You can't do just one workshop,
you can't share your story one time.
Pretty much everythingwe talked about today,
you're going to repeat oryou're going to iterate on.
If you set up your mailing list today,
great. You don't have toset it up again tomorrow,
but tomorrow maybe you start addingnames and the day after that you maybe
(28:13):
you're going to send your firstemail and the week after that,
you're going to send your second email.So everything that we've talked about,
it just builds on itself.
These are not one and done ideas.
So I laugh every time a health coach says,
but I post it on Instagram and I stilldidn't get any bites for health coaching.
(28:34):
No duh. Do we still saythat? My kids asked me,
mom, what's some of the slang fromwhen you were our age? And I said,
we used to say no, duh.
And then we'd get in trouble because wesay it to a parent or something and then
they would get very mad.But anyway, no, duh,
that one Instagram post didn'tbring clients your way. Keep
(28:55):
going even when it feelsslow. Another small step,
another small step, another smallstep. That's the only way to do this.
That's the only way to do anything new.
So thank you so much for joining me today.
If there's anything I mentionedin this episode that you're like,
what was that link again, Michelle?
Of course you can just re-listen to thisepisode or just go to the show notes on
(29:18):
my website. We'll have themall listed out for you.
So you could set up your mailing list.
You can check out Workshop Successand you can text message me.
We will repeat this one because if youhave a question you'd like me to answer
in a future show, this one's important.
Go to healthcoachpower.com/text.
Can't wait to hear from you and I'llsee you all next week. Take care,
everybody.
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