Want to get the best strategies on how to get coaching clients online?

You are in the right place.

Today, you’ll get my foolproof 3-step method to get your first paying coaching clients fast.

And in case you’re wondering, this system will work for you even if you don’t have a big network or email list (or any subscribers).

Ready to learn how to get coaching clients? Here we go.

How to get your first coaching clients

You know, finding your first paying coaching clients is easier than you might think. You just need to be strategic about your marketing.

You see, if you try to juggle 100 different strategies to get clients, you’ll likely not get far.

But with ONE simple strategy, you’ll get your clients faster than you think.

In this post, I’ll show you how to use social media platforms to get clients. That’s because time and time again, it has been the fastest way for my clients to set up their businesses. 

And in fact, when I first started as a Facebook ads coach, I got my first paying client from Facebook groups. (I’ll give you my step-by-step process below, so keep reading.)

There are other ways to get clients, too. For example, here’s how a few of my own clients have found their first paying coaching clients:

Emily Liou (Career coach)

Emily is a career coach who got some of her first clients from tapping into her network on LinkedIn. She simply announced her new side business on LinkedIn and quickly got a few paying clients. She also used Facebook, Google, and Pinterest. 

Toni Patterson (Career coach)

Toni got her first paying client from a telesummit. Now she uses platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook to get new clients to get excited about her offers. 

Cristina Cantu (Naturopathic doctor)

Cristina, a health coach, found her first coaching client on Instagram.

Ruby Lee (Dating coach)

Ruby, a relationship coach, got her first client from Reddit. 

You can use any of these strategies. Here below, I show you specifically how to use social media (includes platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, and Twitter).

Step #1 Connect with potential clients

Before we dive in, we need to quickly talk about WHY people buy from you.

The answer? Trust is one of the most important factors when your clients decide whether to work with you or not.

When you’re starting out and you’re not as well known, online groups are one of the fastest ways to connect and build trust with your potential clients.

Here’s how to use them to get started and build an audience of potential clients:

Build real engagement with your target audience by participating in relevant online groups on Facebook, LinkedIn, Yahoo, Reddit, and industry-specific forums. And make no mistake: Your audience is on one of these platforms. For example, already 200 million people belong to meaningful Facebook groups.

These groups allow you to build your audience via direct, 2-way engagement with your audience. In other words, instead of just talking at your audience the way you would do via an email list (where your subscribers don’t really have a way to engage with you), you’re talking with them via actual conversations.

Because of this, with online groups you can build relationships in weeks that would take you months to do with email.

Wondering how you can find those forums?

You know how there are TONS of Facebook groups and Reddit threads? That good old search bar is all you need.

For example, if you search for “reddit” + “career” on Google, you’ll find an entire forum FULL of your ideal clients.

It’s the first search result!

Or, on Facebook, if you type in your industry term and navigate to the “Groups” tab, you’ll find the same as well. Here’s a screenshot of the results I get when I type in “Career.” The first group shown alone has almost 9,000 members in the group!

Now that you know how to find these groups, let’s talk about what to do with them.

This is important because if you’re not careful, it can be easy to waste your precious time in groups on activities that don’t build your business.

Let me show you how to avoid this problem and turn these groups into a prospect generating harvest:

When building relationships in groups, make sure to…

• Choose groups where your ideal clients are active
• Introduce yourself so they know who you are and how you can help them
• Give value to them by engaging in conversations and posting insightful content
• Showcase your expertise by answering people’s questions and giving helpful advice
• Infotain – build trust while being interesting and entertaining
• Engage as a person – be yourself so that people will relate to you as a person

Want my guide on what content you should share on social media? Here you go.

After following the above steps for just a few weeks, your audience will know you and be ready to hear about your offer.

And you what that means? It means that when you share your offer, you’ll actually make sales instead of getting crickets!

Step #2: Identify potential clients

And at this point, you might start wondering…

“Ok, I’ve built a relationship with an audience. How do I share my offer and get clients?”

Let’s talk about one of the EASIEST ways to do this, using the trust and relationships you’ve now built inside of online groups.

The Power of Free Assessments

By now, you’ve delivered value inside one or more online groups. People know, like and trust you to some degree. That means you should have built up the “social capital” to be able offer to help members of this audience, for free.

And the easiest way to share your offer and get your first paying clients is by using the power of free assessments.

These are free calls where you spend 15 minutes helping someone with one problem to show just how much you can help them with.

And then, at the end of the call, ask if they’d like to continue getting more results by working with you.

Here are a few examples of free assessments that my clients have been successful with in the past:

• Meal Plan Assessment: “Tell me what you’ve been eating, and I’ll give you 3 easy changes to your diet to lose 5 pounds naturally”
• Brand Assessment: “Tell me about your current brand positioning, and I’ll give you 3 recommendations to stand out in your industry.”
• Baby Sleep Assessment: “Tell me about your baby’s current sleep schedule, and I’ll give you 3 tips to help your child sleep longer through the night.”

Here’s an example of a free Pinterest assessment
one of my clients used to get several calls

Key Point: Solve ONE Quick Problem

Make sure to solve just ONE quick problem for your free assessment.

You need to solve a big enough problem to show that you can help get results…

BUT you don’t want to solve so much of their problem that they think they don’t need any more help.

Think about these as “quick wins,” not the entire solution.

For example: If you’re a weight loss coach, you don’t want to try to cram in a lot of information about weight loss into 15 minutes. Instead, show them how they can quickly get results (but not ALL the results) with a meal plan or an exercise routine.

Make sense?

Want to learn exactly what these quick wins look like? Check out Step 2 in this video I put together for you:

After you’ve gotten people to take you up on these calls, here’s what you’re going to do to get paying coaching clients…

Step #3 Get coaching clients fast after offering the “quick win” for free

At the beginning of the free call, you’ll let them know…

“Hey I’m going to help you do this, and show you what more is possible for you. If you’re interested in getting my help to do more, we’ll talk at the end of this session about how I can help you more, alright?”

That way, you set the expectation from the beginning that if they like the “quick win,” which of course they will, you’ll talk more about how you can help them more when they hire you.

So those are the steps to get coaching clients fast.

My students have used these exact steps to get their first clients in just a few weeks, or even days, and I can’t wait to hear about how you use them to get YOURS too so that you can continue building your online coaching business.

There are two things you can’t skip if you want to get your first paying coaching clients quickly:

#1: You have to take the time to build those relationships before you offer anything. This will make it 10X easier for you to sell your coaching offer… And your clients will be HAPPY to pay.

#2: You have to make sure that your free assessment is something that your audience truly wants.

Want feedback on this?

Let me know what free assessment you’re thinking about offering in the comments!