Prosperous Coach Podcast

This episode is part of the series about lead magnets and how to make sure yours will help you enroll ideal clients who pay you well. Find the show notes at prosperouscoach.com/125.

And, if you haven’t heard it yet, first listen to Does a Coach Need a Lead Magnet? at prosperouscoach.com/124. It’s super short.

When I started my coaching business, if you would have asked me my marketing approach I would have said “I let people know I’m a coach and offer a free sample coaching sessions to enroll clients.”

Everything I did reflected that basic misunderstanding about what effective marketing is — from the topics of public speaking I did, to the types of articles I wrote, all the way to the messaging on my website.

Did that approach work for me. Not a wit. Even though I got a lot of praise for the sessions, people who had a free session said “Thanks” but had no interest in long term coaching. And sometimes I fell into the trap of coaching them for many, many free session just hoping it would hook them in.

It took me a long time to realize why my mindset and actions weren’t paying off. But also it seemed most others coaches were doing the same thing so like a lemming I followed them off the cliff.

Two decades later, I’m a bit surprised when I look at coach’s website and see them trying this same approach.  I feel so much compassion for them and I am instantly transported back to my own frustration early on – working so hard and not getting results.

Mistakes Coaches Make on Their Websites

There are loads of mistakes I see on coach’s websites and I have a whole series about client-winning coaching websites to help you with this, which you can find at prosperouscoach.com/websites.

One of the big coaching website mistakes, but by no means the biggest, is offering a free coaching session. Sometimes it’s high up on the home page. Sometimes it’s buried where it will never be found. 

Either way, a free coaching session is not a strategic approach to enroll paying clients who are serious about transformation. A free coaching session is not a smart lead magnet.

Why not? 

1.     The coach cannot possibly demonstrate the real value of ongoing PAID coaching through a single free coaching session.

2.     It’s too soon to offer a live call.

This last point is my main point. Too much too soon makes coaching prospects turn and run.

Fast Marketing Only Sells Products Not Coaching Services

I admit I’ve purchased things through a single Instagram ad IF the unique value of the product is clear AND I’m already seeking a solution to the problem that product answers. That’s fast marketing.

But services, and especially paid coaching programs, aren’t easily sold through fast marketing. Coaching is still a relative unknown. Rarely do people seek it, but that’s just one reason why fast marketing techniques aren’t appropriate.

Think about it … what are the 6 THINGS that makess for an excellent coaching relationship?

·      A good fit between the coach and client

·      Trust

·      Honesty

Go here to read the other 3 out of 6 things and see the rest of the show notes.

This episode is part of a new series about lead magnets or what I call freebies. Find the Show Notes for this episode at prosperouscoach.com/124.

I bet you’ve opted in for dozens of lead magnets since you decided to become a coach.

In case you haven’t, a lead magnet or a freebie is just what it sounds like. The idea is that you offer something of unique value related to your niche that your audience wants in exchange for their name and email address.

Then they become a lead for you – a potential future client.

Future clients are the gold mine in your business. They are just as important as current paying clients.

It’s important to build relationships with future clients otherwise you’ll find yourself having to chase potential clients rather than attract them. I labored so hard chasing clients for the first few years of my business. 

If a lead stays on your list, you have the opportunity to continue to communicate with them by email.

Those emails could be anything from a follow up series of emails for a specific campaign or purpose to a teaser email that let’s them know you have a new podcast episode or blog they might want to see. It could be an email that’s personal about you.

It’s a good idea to share some vulnerability and reveal something about you in every email.

If you are receiving my teaser emails each week to let you know when each new podcast episode airs then you have an excellent example showing what I mean by vulnerability in small bits.

Why Do Coaches Need a Leads List?

Well, I suppose you might not need a lead magnet or a leads list if you already have a steady stream of prospects contacting you. And those people are adequately primed to hire you.

The first thing – a steady stream of prospects contacting you — does not necessarily mean that the 2nd thing — people adequately primed to help you — is happening.

Most coaches need to create their own network of potential clients and get them excited about hiring them. Believe me, this is not accomplished by talking all about the virtues of coaching.

It takes time to develop a relationship of trust with people in your target audience leads list.

It may take dozens of messages before your words strike that resonant chord with a person in your audience. That’s because people are busy, distracted and bombarded with messages all day long.

Every one of us only pays attention to messages that hit the mark of what’s most important to us right now.

And, of course, not everyone on your leads list will take action to work with you.

That’s completely natural and, in fact, you don’t want everyone on your list to become a client. You only want to attract the most ideal clients. Listen to episode #117 called How to Attract ideal Coaching Clients Who Can’t Wait to Work with You.

I feel blessed. All of my ideal clients are finding me through my podcast. In a way, those subscribers are an alternate leads list Occasionally, I offer a special freebie related to a podcast and coaches are opting in for those by the dozens every week. That’s how they get on the Prosperous Coach list.

It’s fun. I see someone subscribe for a freebie of mine and then a month or two later some of those people fill out the application to work with me in my Signature Program. That’s how I know my systems to connect with ideal clients are working. 

I want you to have that going for you.

To see the 6 powerful questions about your lead magnet go here.

This episode is short and sweet. Find the show notes at prosperouscoach.com/123.

When coaches reach out to work with me, they almost always say that their biggest fear is marketing. They say: “I’m no good at selling myself.”

And I say, “Well, that’s okay because you don’t have to sell yourself.” And I mean it.

Sure, you’re the coach and you’ll be delivering coaching to your client. Although, I really believe that coaching is co-creative. It’s not at all about performing.

But if you go about your business the way I suggest, you won’t sell coaching at all. 

Coaching is a hard sell. People don’t know they want it. I’ve talked about this many times before. If you haven’t heard it I recommend you listen to episode #66 – How to Describe Your Coaching Program Without Selling Coaching.

Still, this is important. Do NOT sell yourself. Don’t be salesy and promotional. It doesn’t feel good and it’s not effective.

Instead be about what your prospective clients care about. Know without a doubt the exact things that they want. Not the general things. Don’t try to cover all the bases and say I help people reach their dreams or something equally bland and non-specific.

Specifics grab attention. Specifics grow the know–like–trust factor because your audience can sense that you understand them and are an advocate for them.

My very first coach, Judy, used to ask me: “What has frustrated your audience so much that they feel mad as hell and aren’t going to take it anymore?”

When you know the answer to that your marketing job just got a lot easier.

When you speak your audience’s language, when you care about them … when you speak to what’s tripping them up, what’s keeping them from the big important things they long for … you don’t have to sell.

Yes, you should think this all through. Strategize everything about your business so that it shows you can help that specific audience solve those specific problems and reach that elusive goal. This is what I do with coaches in my 5 month VIP Coaching Business Breakthrough program.

Here’s what you can do right now to dramatically improve your coaching income and your joy in your business:

1. Stop having your website be all about coaching.

2. Stop having vague language about how you help your clients. 

3. Stop making your marketing about you!

When you make this shift you’ll be amazed at how much better it feels. You no longer do the unsavory thing – to sell coaching, to sell yourself. 

You’ll no longer try to convince people about the value of coaching. Instead you’ll attract ideal clients who resonate with your message and they’ll want to hire you.

It’s such a HUGE relief.

Make this change today. It’s worth it to retool your business a bit so you don’t keeping preaching to an empty house. 

This episode is inspired by brilliant coaches everywhere who, no matter how many skills and talents they bring to the table, are afraid to own their worth and go boldly into the money conversation. Show notes can be found at prosperouscoach.com/122.

Take On The CEO Role and Own Your Value

Chances are you came to coaching from a job where you were paid a salary or an hourly rate. Someone else set that amount. And you received the same basic paycheck over and over.

The control was out of your hands. And you probably just did the job without thinking a lot about the money piece.

Now, you are the boss. You are the CEO. You decide how much you charge for your services, how much you earn and when you pay yourself.

It’s time to make that mindset shift. Own your role as CEO of your business.

Have you done that yet? You’ll be amazed at the difference in your self-esteem when you do.

If you take on that role with enthusiasm, you’ll pay yourself well. You’ll stop doubting your value and thinking small.

Look, I get it. I started out doing group coaching at $10 per person for a 3 hour face to face experience. That meant I was earning about $27/hour. But really less because it didn’t take into account all the time I spent developing my program and marketing to attract prospects.

My first year as a coach I only made $5000. That’s not a living. That’s a hobby.

You decide if you have a hobby or a serious business. You make that happen.

There’s a fear, right? It seems more strategic somehow to charge low amounts. As if you’ll have less rejection. As if lower prices will attract ideal clients.

That’s a lie you’re telling yourself. Valuing yourself less doesn’t make prospects value your services more.

And I have proof that higher prices enroll more ideal clients with less hesitation. 

There’s an old story in your mind. Lessons you learned when you were young about value and money drive your decision about how much your services are worth. You may think it will take years to change your story. But actually you can make that shift in a moment.

I’m diverged from my topic today because I’m passionate about this.

This episode isn’t about how much you charge. For help with that see episode #60 How to Price Your Signature Coaching Program.

It’s also not about how to raise your fees, which you can find in episode #57.

This episode is about how to approach and then ace the money conversation in a Discovery Call — which is an enrollment opportunity that you set up with coaching prospects.

Ace the Money Conversation with 5 Tips

By the way, the Discovery Call is not a free sample coaching session.

Sample sessions are for brand new coaches trying to fulfill the requirements for certification. It’s a great way to learn how to coach, but honestly not an effective approach to enroll ideal clients who will pay well, stay longer and refer more ideal clients.

So there you are in the Discovery Call, you’ve asked some powerful questions to reveal what’s top of mind for your prospect. 

Read more here about what to say to enroll coaching clients.

A favorite past VIP client of mine, Shawna Warner, emailed me saying that she had challenging enrollment situation that didn't end well. She thought, and I thought too, that it would be valuable to all coaches to hear about this situation and discuss it a little bit. See the full transcript at prosperouscoach.com/121.

First. I really want you to know more about Shawna and her business and how she started. So, Shawna, I'm going to turn it over to you. Thank you so much for taking the time to connect with us today and to share your story.

Shawna: Hi, Rhonda. Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here. I think I met you in the spring of 2017 and that's when I launched my coaching business, Cultivating Resilient Teens.

And then I kind of followed in your footsteps and launched a podcast by the same name last fall, because I really wanted to try to reach out on a different platform and help parents empower their teenage daughters to build that confidence, integrity, and resilience for all of life's adventures through my podcast.

I've I feel like it's been easier to dive into what you and I put together as the 4 steps of cultivating, a more resilient teen. And so we talk about does your daughter need to develop a strong sense of self to be successful in life? And then we go on to explore how she can create meaningful educational experiences and design, healthy social scenarios and foster a connective family life. And all that can be found on the website that we put together, CultivatingResilientTeens.com.

Rhonda: Cool. Shawna really created an amazing business. I often think if I had, when I was a teenage daughter, had a resource like Shawna, that I would have been a much happier teen. My parents would have been happier with me.

And, so if anybody out there has a teen daughter and you kind of know what some of these challenges are, I would highly recommend you tap into her podcast and that you also check out her website because Shawna has some secret sauce. She's got a special way that she works with teen daughters and also the parents who love them.

So Shawna, what inspired you to work with this very specific target audience of parents with teen daughters?

Shawna: Growing up with three sisters and a mom who coached me and all of us through our issues definitely had an influence over my decision for me.

I was stuck, I just want to start my own business. So when you and I got together for our first call, it was really those thoughtful questions that you asked me to help me hone in on what I really, really wanted to specialize in.

I thought about, okay, what was it like to be a teenage girl? I looked at what my daughter was going through, what her friends were going through. And I mean, I realized that it's super exciting to watch your daughter grow into her own person. And as a mom, it's so hard to let go and lose control.

So with the media platforms and all the intense feelings and the differences of opinion, you and I really talking about all of that … I just knew that teens and parents could make the transition easier. And like you said, a little more enjoyable if they had the right tools and strategies for the job.

Rhonda: What is it that you love most about your business so far?

Shawna: I just love coaching teenage girls. I feel like making the connection with them is so important because what they're going through is real. And it can be really hard when they begin to realize that they're not alone and that they can actually change old habits and patterns and that they can create the life that they want.

See the rest of the transcript&

Some time ago a topic came up in Prosperous Coach Club, my Facebook group for new-ish coaches. The coach was talking about the challenge of networking with other coaches.

And that topic spurred me to talk about something related but not exactly the same, which is about partnering with another coach either short or long term. Find the full Show Notes for this episode at prosperouscoach.com/120

By the way, for this episode partnering could be anything from partnering on one small project to going all in and building a business together in partnership.

So first, I want to own my bias. I’ve always been a bit of a maverick. I have unconventional ideas and like to be the sole driver of those ideas. I very much enjoy the challenge of running my business driven by my own values and desires. I want to be able to turn on a dime. Make decisions quickly knowing it affects only me.

For those reasons, I’m not a good partner candidate. And that’s okay. You might be a good partner candidate.

By the way, I didn’t always know these things about myself. I found this out the hard way trying to partner with a number of fine human beings over the years including, at one point, my husband. Bless us, that was a challenging time in our marriage I can tell you!

Looking back at it all I can say that the biggest reason I floundered in partnerships was a lack of confidence. If I had known my own business, known my own mind, my wants and what doesn’t work for me before I leaped … well you know … hindsight.

Partnership is a Big Risk

If you are risk averse or a conflict avoider, you may not be up for partnership until you grow those strengths.

 When you’re a new coach you are vulnerable to partnership because it can be lonely and overwhelming doing everything yourself.

You don’t have automatic colleagues, as you do in other jobs, to bounce ideas off of. You don’t have the built in accountability of a supervisor or a team leader. Everything is on you – the costs of building and maintaining all aspects of the business and the workload of marketing and delivering services.

For this reason, many coaches prematurely reach out to partner with another coach. Some other coach shows up, suggests collaborating and out of loneliness you say yes. On the other hand, trying a partnership may help you grow in lots of ways through the lessons you learn. There’s a lot of value in trial and error.

When a coach I’m working with brings up the idea of collaboration with another coach, I throw a red flag out there so the coach can slow down and think things through.

The first rule of thumb is only partner once you are well established in your own business. Then, you are clear of the value you deliver, your audience and services. You are differentiated from the other coach.

With that confidence and certainty you’re less likely to enter into a partnership out of desperation and unwittingly jump right into a classic trap.

4 Big Considerations Before You Leap Into Partnership with Another Coach

Finding the RIGHT partner at the RIGHT time for you is more important than looking for a helpmate. Hire a business coach for that role.

Here are 4 things to think through completely before you offer or accept partnership of any kind with another coach (and for that matter, with any individual or organization).

Are You Complementary and Compatible?

Partnership in business is a lot like partnership in marriage. You need to be compatible and compliment each other in many ways to weather the difficult times and find joy in the partnership.

This episode is about the un-mined gold in your coaching business. Find the Show Notes at prosperouscoach.com/119.

Because I’ve studied the strategic art of niching and coaching niches for so long I’ve noticed something that no one is talking about. 

There are niches within your niche that will serve you better than staying broader. There are layers. The surface is not the most exciting or lucrative layer. In fact, it’s many layers deeper.

The Layers of Your Coaching Niche

When I work with my VIP clients we discover a niche ideal for them that’s a few layers down to something more strategic than where they started. Let me give you an example.

·      Layer 1 of course is coaching. Coaching itself is a kind of niche.

·      Another layer in might be relationship coaching

·      Another layer beneath that is to pick a particular type of relationship, let’s say marriage.

·      Then you can niche deeper than that to put some context about the specific PROBLEM you help the married individuals solve.

Now, keep this in mind as I share one of my VIP client’s niches …

Deanna Bryant, whose brand is Revive Your Midlife Marriage helps married WOMEN cultivate meaning and intimacy with their husbands after the kids are grown.

By the way, Deanna has an insightful podcast called Revive Your Midlife Marriage. If you’re a woman in midlife with grown children and your marriage is feeling a bit flat and empty, her show and services are for you!

So let’s break this niche down into components:

·      Deanna serves women. (Choosing a gender can help you narrow your niche but alone it’s not enough.)

·      These are women in midlife – a tough time of life with specific challenges. (It’s smart to pick a time of life sometimes for a specific audience.)

·      In addition these women have husbands. (Not all women have husbands and only some are still with a husband in midlife.)

·      AND they want meaning and intimacy with those husbands again. (We know this because Deanna did market research for her audience.)

·      She also adds after the kids are grown because that empty nest time is a crossroads in a marriage. (Sometimes the kids are the glue holding the marriage together.)

Do you see how SPECIFIC Deanna’s niche is and can you imagine why that’s an advantage to attracting clients?

Doesn’t Niching Narrowly Mean You’ll Lost Opportunities?

Look, lots of people don’t understand the value of niching. If you niche narrowly your friends and family might question your wisdom because they don’t get it. But their advice to broaden won’t help you.

You might be thinking … “But by narrowing in all those ways Deanna is missing so many opportunities! She’s missing the chance to work with men, to work with unmarried women, to work with women who don’t have grown kids.”

The reality is this … in this world we live in we must compete for attention as a service business. Even if you don’t think of it as competition, it’s there.

Broad Coaching Niches Means Slow Business Growth

Click here for the rest of the Show Notes.

This episode is a story about a coach whose business has yet to pay off 5 years in.

If you’re in a similar situation where your coaching business hasn’t paid off after years of significant investment I hope this will be an AHA for you.

Show notes for this episode are at prosperouscoach.com/118

A few weeks ago, a past client of mine re-emerged. She was clearly frustrated about the lack of income from her coaching business. Feeling defeated but also at an important crossroads in her life she was considering whether she should shutter the business we created for her a year ago or pivot somehow. 

I invited her to have a call with me.

And by the way, this generous coach gave me permission to share some of our conversation with you. For her privacy, let’s call her Sherrie.

Sherrie was acutely aware of the large investments she had made over 5 years to learn how to coach, to create websites, to purchase mentoring to build her business and more.

It’s not unusual for a coach (and by the way other entrepreneurs too) to invest large amounts of money and time to get their business off the ground. 

I myself spent over $75000 before my business reliably paid off. I have recouped those investments several hundred times over now. But it took me a while.

Looking back, I can easily say that much of my own financial investment was frivolously rather than strategically spent. I purchased many bright shiny objects in the form of training, applications, VAs and experts. I was thinking … “Maybe THIS will be the thing that makes me successful!”

However, what was really missing for me was about mindset — I was treating my business like a hobby rather than treating my business as a business. I was going through the motions week after week but not crossing the important thresholds.

I was acting like a perpetual student. Episode 82 is all about this. Check it out if you haven’t heard it already.

The truth is if you want to earn as a coach you have to take the risk to get serious about your business.

Back to Sherrie …   For our call, I instinctively knew that my role wouldn’t so much be as a business mentor for Sherrie, which is my usual role with my clients. I felt that pure coaching was called for.

While I always use coaching skills in the work I do with my clients, most of my sessions with clients are more consultative, guiding them to strategic choices and actions based on my expertise about successful coaching niches and coaching businesses.

A couple of months after Sherrie launched her new business targeting a unique and viable audience the pandemic hit. And many in her audience were caught in the front lines as essential workers.

Being a person with a caring heart, Sherrie swung into action to help … offering her time for free.

She said that over the last year she didn’t have any opportunities for enrollment and she felt she couldn’t charge for two reasons:

1.     Her audience was beleaguered (that was Sherrie’s word) with the events of the pandemic. 

2.     There were many free services for this audience being offered by non-profits.

Click here for more Show Notes and the big AHA of the coaching session.

I’ve been promising this episode to you. Find the Show Notes at prosperouscoach.com/117.

Before we dig in I want to thank you for all the 5 star ratings and great reviews you have bestowed on Prosperous Coach Podcast and me.

Here’s a recent review from someone who used the moniker Soulful Coach. I think I know who you are and I’m bowing to you right now. Thank you for honoring me with your praise!

Here’s what this coach said:

This podcast is my go to for encouragement and quick reminders on specific topics that I’m struggling with. Rhonda is an amazing business coach and person. Her VIP program for coaches not only helps you identify your niche and much more but also helps you achieve personal growth in all dimensions of your life.

This review fits today’s topic about attracting ideal clients. I feel so blessed that I get to work with amazing human beings like Soulful Coach. How did that happen?

Most all of my clients apply to work with me because they like what they are hearing in my podcast episodes. My podcast is my content strategy.

What’s your content strategy? Whatever it is, the content should strike a resonant chord with your audience. That’s the best way to attract ideal clients.

And here’s the thing … if a new coach — my target audience — doesn’t resonate with what I’m saying in my episodes I know that they won’t be an ideal client for me. Nor will I be the best coaching business mentor for them. So through my podcast I’m calling in the absolute best clients for me.

I can be authentic, share what I believe and have experienced both in my own coaching business as well as other coaches and be sure it’s going to land with some and not others.

And that’s totally okay.

This concept applies to so many aspects of your business.

I remember feeling bummed out when early on in my business I looked at subscribe stats for my leads list and saw that people were unsubscribing from my list. I felt rejected and worried. What was I doing wrong?

Now I know, it’s actually a gift when people choose to get off your leads list! You want those who will never hire you to move on — get off your list, stop participating in your Facebook groups or not show up to your free webinars.

The people that are left are who you’re meant to work with.

This happy attrition is partly what my last episode was about, which you can find at prosperouscoach.com/116. 

3 Ways to Call In Coaching Clients Who Fit You

So how can you call in clients who will fit you to a T?

1. Through your target audience choice. (And this is the first step I help coaches take.)

Before you can know what your niche is, you need to decide who you’re serving. What is the unique narrow group — the target audience — that will align best with your skills, your passion, your experience, and your personal story?

Click here to read the other 2 ways.

This episode is inspired by the wisdom of hindsight. Don’t we all love hindsight! Show Notes can be found at prosperouscoach.com/116.

As a highly experienced coach, I can say without hesitation that not every coach will be the best client for me. And not every client will be the best client for you either.

In fact, some clients could end up being difficult to work with. Episode #98 was about this. In that case you and the client may suffer each time you have a session. And that’s sad because here you are intending to do good yet harm could be done. 

I assure you, it’s not because there’s anything wrong with that client or that there’s anything wrong with you. It comes down to how well the client aligns with you and you align with the client.

Differences in Pace, Style and Values
When communication style, pace and guiding values align there’s a harmonious coaching relationship.

Let’s take pace. Have you ever had a client who talks so fast you can’t understand them? Or maybe it’s you who is the fast talker and your client is struggling to keep up with you. Pace in speech and processing is very personal.

There can be differences about the way our minds work. Differences in learning style, in work style too. Some client’s will have very different values than you and that could be challenging.

It’s true that part of our job as coaches is to learn our client’s ways and meet them with respect and agility in our approach. Sometimes that’s just not possible.

One of the preferences that I have with my clients is that we value each other as human beings. I’ve had clients where I felt like their slave. Obviously, that didn’t last.

But I’ve also had clients who are warm and connective, which brings us both so much joy. Now I ask for this kind of connection when I begin a client relationship. I don’t just want to help a coach build their coaching business from the ground up. I want us to enjoy the journey and each other.

5 Ways Fit Helps You and Your Coaching Clients
Fit between a client and coach makes the difference in whether:

1.    You end a session drained or energized

2.    Your coaching lands with the person

3.    The client makes real measurable progress

4.    You receive testimonials and referrals

5.    The client comes back for more

 If you’re just getting started as a coach, there’s a strong desire to enroll anyone! You may be feeling “I’ll take anyone!” After all, at first client flow can be a slow trickle. I remember that. And I totally get that need to experience yourself coaching and earning as fast as you can.

As you gain experience though you might find yourself turning down a potential client before you’ve ever coached them. I have many times. I know that might seem hard to imagine.

Can You Fire a Coaching Client?
You may even need to end a coaching relationship at some point in time. I’ve had to let clients go. Each time, I’ve reflected and realized that there were warning signs that the fit wasn’t right when I met them in a Discovery Call.

Read about why and how to fire a client here.