This is where it begins. In the next few minutes I’m going to give you the exact steps to take to get your first paying clients and start the road to becoming a professional coach.
I define a professional coach as anyone earning 5 figures a year, so based on charging people £200-300 per month that’s roughly 5 paying clients.
So basically what I’m about to share with you is ‘how to become a professional coach’. Once you get to this barrier there really shouldn’t be anything stopping you from growing your business significantly and why the hell can’t you become a champion coach, earning 6 figures or more per year like so many of my students have achieved.
Once you’re at that monthly rate you can then deploy the strategies I call ‘more juice: maximising what you already have’ to move from £1k to £3k and beyond. Then you’re really up and running.
But why is it that most trainers and coaches just don’t get off the mark and leave the industry?
In the personal training and coaching space depending on where you look you’ll find research telling you that the average lifespan of a trainer is anywhere from 6 months to 18 months. Either statistic makes for pretty grim reading.
In truth I think a lot of it is down to the fact that most people who do their PT (or S&C) courses begin with the passion for the industry but they simply do not have the passion to actually grow a business, to do that hard work that it takes to get things moving.
When the going gets tough the tough get going, and the rest quit!
I think a lot of trainers think that because they’ve got their qualifications clients will be knocking on their door offering them money to train them.
That’s simply not going to happen. That’s called wishful thinking, or maybe naivety or stupidity! You are entitled to absolutely nothing.
Qualifications are meaningless to the masses. They want people they like, who can solve their problems, they do not care what your piece of paper has written on it.
You just do not want to be that coach. Follow these steps, do the hard work and the clients will come.
At the end of this email I’ve put together a really cool offer for you to get some of the resources I share for almost no money at all. Look out for it!
Right here we go, this is the exact that I would deploy if I was starting from scratch right now.
Step 1: Decision time. It starts with YOU!
I can’t really put it any simpler than this. You have to make the decision to be a successful coach. You have to accept that nothing, and I do mean nothing will happen unless you take action. You will never earn a penny if you do not get out there and make it happen.
To help you with this I often ask this question: is the pain of not earning any money from your coaching business painful enough to drive you to take action yet? If it’s not you probably wont do anything, so I suggest you stop reading this newsletter right now.
If it is then for sure read on.
No more excuses. What’s happened to this point is utterly irrelevant.
Yep you read it right, your future clients don’t care about what’s happening in your life right now. All they care about is can you solve their problems.
I use the phrase professional coach for a reason. Professional coaches make their living from the work they do. If you want it to be a hobby that’s cool, don’t do this work. This is not a hobby for me, it never was. It was a passion and later became a calling. That means I’m driven my impact, how many people can I help. I think you’re probably similar.
Step 2: Build Proof.
One of the biggest barriers to getting paying clients is demonstrating the proof that you can get results for them. Why would they part with their cash for your services when they can hire a proven coach?
The first thing you need to do is begin to get proof of what you can do for people. Think about the outcome you can deliver for people. Maybe it’s sports performance, maybe it’s weight loss, doesn’t matter. Come up with a clear outcome and offer it to ALL your friends and family for free. Tell them that your going to be charging £X per month for your stuff from X date, but for now you want to get a bunch of case studies to use in your marketing and you’d like to work with them on it.
Get yourself 5-10 (or even 20-30) people and put them in a Facebook group. Give them training to do every day. Really work hard to look after each and every one of them to get that testimonial. to get 10 people you probably need to offer it to at least 100.
My Lean Body Story
Back in 2012 I was fed up with all the body transformation nonsense on the internet and decided to do something about it. I had tons of testimonials from athletes I was training but hardly any in the ‘Lean’ space since that’s not what I offered at the time. So I ran a free 28 day challenge called the Lean Body Challenge for people. I asked them to make a donation to charity at the end of the project and enrolled a ton of people onto the challenge knowing that by the end of the month I’d have a load of testimonials to use as proof. Over 500 people began and around 100 people saw it through and gave me legit body transformation photos with an average fat loss of 3.5kg using solid training and nutrition principles. It set up a 6 figure revenue stream for me in the years to follow and it’s super simple, you can do the exact same thing. (I will share this whole case study with you in an upcoming newsletter).
Step 4: Build Your Audience.
This one is key. You should be writing and creating content every single day for people. And it starts today.
You see people wait until ‘they’re ready’ but in truth you never will be ready, until after you begin! The best place to start is to be open and honest in your content, talk about your training, your vulnerabilities, and make it clear that you’re learning.
Curate for people. Your favourite books, coaches, exercise etc. Use lists in your content.
Talk about what makes you unique.
This might feel uncomfortable now, but how will it ever feel comfortable unless you get started?
When you feel those nerves it’s telling you to do something. To lean in and take action.
This process never stops. You just get better.
Commit to posting daily on your chosen platform and do it for 6 months.
In one month not much will have happened.
In three to six months you’ll be getting hot leads for your business.
In six to twelve months your life will have changed for good.
Step 5: Start Conversations.
So if step 4 is key, step 5 is critical. No clients will come to you unless you start conversations with them. Here’s how to tackle it.
Every person who likes, comments or engages with your posts send them a message thanking them and ask them how they’re getting on with their training.
Every friend you have on social send them a message and ask them how they are getting on.
Send 50 friend/follow/connection requests per day on your chosen platform. When those people accept follow up with a message similar to the one above.
Get into conversations and let people know what you’re doing now, and how you can help them. When it’s right offer them a free consultation.
Go through your phone and send messages to everyone with your message above, and also tell them you’re set up as coach and are they available for a free consultation in the next few days where you can talk to them about achieving their goals.
From experience with every 100 people contacted with legit messages you will get 1-3 leads back saying they are keen for a free consult.
Step 6: Close the deal
So now you have the following going on:
Your proof project from step 3.
Your leads from steps 4 and 5.
Now what you need to do is get the business.
The free consult is where that begins. It can be done online or in person.
Firstly you need something to sell to them. It needs to be a specific outcome to match their goals. It needs to happen over a clear timeframe, and it needs to have a price point or range that can appeal to that person.
In last weeks newsletter I talked about closing £1k+ sales. that newsletter lays out the foundation for what I’m talking about here so make sure you read that.
This step ends when you sign those clients. And I hope you can see that if you do this work you will make it happen. But also you can probably see why most people fail because they don’t do the work.
You can’t moan if you don’t do the work. If you want to be a professional coach this is where it begins.
Step 7: Grow Grow Grow.
Now you’re up and running it’s all about doing an amazing job for those clients, they will become your biggest advocates and help you grow your business through referrals and further testimonials. Nurture them, make them your sole focus, your business depends on it.
I’ll share more on how you can build from £1k to £3k and above in a future newsletter.
The 6 steps might sound pretty simple but honestly that’s where it begins.
Things like email marketing, paid advertising, websites, funnels, webinars, £1k programmes etc all come after these 6 steps. They have their place, they will help you to grow further, but build these habits first, get the proof, get the first 5 clients.
Time to get your wallet out 🙂 My offer to you
At the start of the newsletter I said I had a no brainer of an offer, well here it is.
I have created a full 30 day implementation plan for you to follow called ‘PAYING CLIENTS IN 30 DAYS’, it literally tells you want to do every single day for 30 days.
I normally would sell it for £99 but today I want to send it to you for a fiver!
Yes that’s 5 English pounds. (The price of a Starbucks coffee or a pint in my local pub in Leeds, or half a pint in London! )
(I make that somewhere in the region of a 200x return on investment – someone do the maths on that!!??)
I’m going to keep this offer open for 48 hours, or for 100 people, whichever comes first.
Considering this newsletter is going to over 5000 people I think it will be very popular so don’t hang around and you can get started immediately as the email will have the book in it to download straight away.
It’s actually a LOT more than simply getting paying clients, it’s a complete business building process over 30 days that will set you up for the next couple of years.
Click HERE to get the book now and in 30 days you can have a bunch of clients paying you.
Btw I’m doing this at such a low price so that you buy it, implement it, think it’s great and then we can talk about growing your business to 6 figures and beyond – a true win win!
That’s all for this week, if you have a topic you’d like me to cover in a future newsletter reply to this email and let me know.
Talk soon,
Brendan
If you like this newsletter please share it with someone.
Here’s 4 ways I can help you move forwards:
1. Follow me on instagram for video content, I did a video version of ‘the meeting’ over there for you to check out.
2. Follow me on Linkedin for business content that will help you.
3. Join my entrepreneur coaches group for free support.
4. Book a Vision to Action Session with me.
I’ll be back soon,
Much love,
Brendan
