How do coaches attract ideal coaching clients?

It helps to think a bit like a scientist.

You have an idea that seems valid. Then you conduct experiments several times with slight adjustments to one variable or another all while tracking your results.

Over time, something becomes clear.

Sometimes, what becomes clear is that this set of approaches or ideas aren’t yet the right thing. So you try something else.

But often, there’s a clue that you’re on the right track and you move forward from there.

Your willingness to explore, guided by patience and strategy, is key.

All businesses start this way.

It’s not an arbitrary process but it does require faith, courage and stick-to-itiveness.

Let’s hear what a coach who is 3 years into her business has to say about her attraction experiments that have led to reliable results and lots of great clients.

Meet Writing and Career Coach, Leslie K. Wang PhD

Rhonda:

I am so excited to introduce you to a past VIP mentoring client of mine, Leslie Wang. She founded Your Words Unleashed and has a popular podcast of the same name since 2022. Hope you’ll check it out.

Leslie helps women scholars master their writing habits and publish books that matter to them and to the world.

She’s a qualitative sociologist by training. She spent two decades in academia, including earning a tenured position at UMass Boston. Leslie published two sole author books, and has accrued more than 850 private coaching hours. That’s a lot!

Learn more about Leslie and send any women colleagues or friends in higher education to Leslie at YourWordsUnleashed.com.

Leslie, it’s so fun to reconnect with you, and thank you for taking the time to help other coaches attract clients.

Leslie:

Thank you, Rhonda, for having me. I’m really excited to chat with you.

Rhonda:

When you first reached out to me, you said you thought it would be kind of fun to share what you have learned, and I think it’s great to be able to hear from an experienced coach — somebody who’s been doing this for a while — what you learned and what was not working at first, and then how you changed.

Fears and Early Attempts to Enroll Coaching Clients

How did you approach attracting clients early in your coaching career, and is that different to how you approach attracting clients now?

Leslie:

It’s such a great question, and yes, I take a very different approach now compared to when I first started coaching in 2018. When I first started, I was completely terrified. I was filled with imposter syndrome. I didn’t believe I had the skills to start coaching and certainly not to start charging for those services, So I remember sending out a blast email to pretty much everyone I knew asking if they wanted to be coached for free.

I put out the word to my Facebook network, and I remember being really worried that I would be inundated with requests and I wouldn’t be able to keep up <laugh>. And the opposite happened. No one took me up on this offer, which was also kind of humiliating and embarrassing at the same time, and I felt super dejected.

I really was worried that I was being judged by other people in my network. So, these are like mostly professors and other kinds of academics. So, I basically just started asking friends directly if I could coach them, and I got a lot of people to say yes that way.

And then from there, they started referring other people to me. I started posting a lot more on Facebook, not only to my own feed, but also to like within various, groups for academic women that had a few thousand people in them.

If someone had an issue with writing or they were having some sort of career related crisis or issue, I would say, “Oh, I’m a coach. I can help you with that. Take a look at my website.” And through that, I gained a number of clients who worked with me for like six sessions or more.

The Game Changer

And what really tipped the balance for me was the pandemic. I put my coaching on hold because everything was shut down and I was taking care of my child full time. But it gave me space to do things like listen to podcasts, like yours, and think about where I wanted to take my coaching.

And I got inspired. I just had this like lightning bolt, kind of idea to put together this list of insider tips to writing and publishing an academic book. I had published two books of my own with university presses, and I had always thought that it was crazy how difficult it was to find out any information about that process. It was super opaque and very difficult. And so many people, thousands and thousands of people go through it every year.

So, I created a document that compiled all of my wisdom, and then it also included a link to my coaching page. And this turned out to be my first freebie. I put it on social media, it picked up a lot of traction, and from there I got a lot of new clients.

I decided, if I really want to do this for a living, I need to build a real business. And that’s when I started working with Rhonda. I already knew I was going focus on writing coaching, but you really helped me create like a core message and build a really beautiful professional website. That very much does the selling for me. You also helped me start a podcast, which is now in the top 5% in the world.

And that’s a major way that I attract clients now. If you stick with it long enough, you get yourself out there, then people just start knowing who you are.

Rhonda:

I really appreciate all the detail that you shared. We did a lot of work on getting the messaging compelling. It’s just not obvious how you put together copy on a website or develop a signature program or any of those kinds of things with language that is streamlined and, and will attract. It was so much fun to work with you!

Be a Three-Dimensional Person When You Market Coaching

What strategies have worked best for you when it comes to attracting new clients?

Leslie:

The podcast is great, but you can’t just start a podcast without having a lot of very clear decisions made about who you serve. I posted frequently about my coaching work on Facebook within my friend network, which is 1200 people. So, even though it’s a smaller level of visibility, I feel like sticking with it and like people know you’re really serious about it.

Just stick with one or two social media platforms and, and just regularly show up on there and not just talk about coaching. I think it’s important for people to see that you’re also a three-dimensional person. You have a perspective. You care about things that are not just your work.

So even on LinkedIn, I will talk about a wide range of things that don’t ostensibly have anything to do with my writing coaching. There was a period of time after I left my professor position, I posted a lot about the experience of leaving academia and what an emotional rollercoaster it was for me, but also like how it’s similar to what so many other people go through.

I ended up getting a lot of clients that way because I was sharing my own experiences and people would be like, “Oh, I resonate with her experience as a person. She happens to be a writing coach. I need help with writing!”

And then like other strategies could include free or low-cost workshops. I once did a 30-minute workshop at Rutgers University for free. And, that ended up turning into two or three more paid workshops, all of which spread my name on the campus as someone to work with. And I got a number of clients that way.

Rhonda:

You have said so many things I want to unpack. I love your posts on LinkedIn. I think they’re really dynamic. I engage on a lot of them <laugh>.

And I agree … if you’re going to be on socials, be a three-dimensional person, and that doesn’t mean sharing what you’re eating today, you know, that kind of stuff — being a little bit strategic about it. There’s always just a micro topic, something that teaches a little bit while you’re also very gently but also in a compelling way, letting people know what you do.

It’s not super salesy, but it is valuable. And that is something that LinkedIn and I think most socials they’ll give you more algorithm love if you can do that.

And I love how you said a couple times, STICK WITH IT! You know, once you have targeted an audience and developed a signature program and developed a website that speaks to what that audience really wants and cares about, stick with it.

I think you’re lucky that you had a campus — this group of people that are already serious about their work and here you are offering something of value that’s going to help them publish, perhaps get tenured — a small but really engaged network. So, with all those things —

Leslie:

Thank you. So I say I’m a writing coach, but ultimately, and I’ve shared this several times on social media, but I see myself as, or my goal is helping academics suffer less <laugh> in ways that are meaningful to them. And that usually means they want to spend more time or feel better about their writing because that’s why they got into this. That’s also what they need to do to, to keep moving. And so, I’m like, “I will help you suffer less.”

Rhonda:

What I take away from that is remember that the pain points matter.

How This Coach Got Comfortable with Marketing

A lot of coaches struggle with self-promotion. How did you get comfortable with marketing?

Leslie:

Am I comfortable with marketing? I would say yes. But when I first started it was so scary. I really linked self-promotion with bragging and being like egotistical, right?

I had to do a big reframe around self-promotion as being not about me, but about helping others through my ideas, and really using my values to lead pretty much everything that I do online.

I’ve become a lot more fearless in how I market because I’ve seen that it’s like risk taking, if you get to a point where you feel like you can start taking some emotional risks in terms of allowing people to see certain things about you or see how you handle certain situations in your life, it helps people feel this sense of comradery with you. They’re just more likely to see you as like a real person.

Like we keep talking about the three-dimensional human being thing. I think that’s so important with marketing — and it is this sort of like long game, right? So people might be somehow connected to you or following you for years before they actually are in a position to purchase something from you or to work with you.

I think it’s also really useful to base things in stories. People are able to take something away that’s tangible and valuable and potentially useful for them in that moment.

Each one of my posts tends to have one point to it, that’s very much intentional. I might use a client session that I just had to highlight a transformation that you can get through coaching with me, right? But I show it through somebody else’s experience of it.

Or, I might draw an on an experience I had when I was a professor, um, to talk about how I think higher education can be improved. And, and those sorts of posts get me connected with other academics who are maybe not looking for coaching right now, but like they might in the future.

Rhonda:

That old fashioned way of marketing is not what people want to see or experience. Giving something of value away, but also occasionally reminding people, this is what I do here, the offers that I have.

And podcasting I think is so great for that because, you know, people often say to me, and I’m sure this happens to you too, Leslie, they’ll say, “Oh, you sound just like your podcast” Or, “Oh, I’m so excited to talk to you because I’ve been listening to your podcast for so long and getting so much value.” That idea of being a thought leader too, which every coach can do if you want to do it.

Leslie:

It’s funny, I feel like with the podcast, I was putting it off because it was really scary to put my literal voice out there and my ideas. But it’s like flexing a muscle, right? And it’s like the more reps you do, the stronger you get, the more comfortable you get, the more creative you can get too. And then if you start to build a following then, then word of mouth and things kind of start to have a life of their own. Other people market for you too.

Rhonda:

Yes, they do! And podcasting is super forgiving. You know, you don’t have to start off being perfect. I’m still not trying to be perfect.

Keep Coaching Clients Coming Back for More

Once you start working with a client, did they tend to stay for you, stay with you for a while? And how do you keep them engaged in coming back for support throughout their career?

Leslie:

I think because the kind of coaching that I do tends to be long-term anyway. I do tend to work with folks a substantial period of time. And so, my signature program, which is the book writing, starts as six months. It often draws out longer just because it’s, it takes quite a while to write books. So people usually sign up for the initial six month package and if everything’s going well, they’re seeing real benefits to the coaching, they’re hitting big milestones … I’d say at least of like, half of my clients stay with me for a year or more.

Rhonda:

Wow!

And, the great thing about having:

You become known for those things and that really encourages people to re-up or come back.

Any way that you can avoid <laugh> enrolling. Now, what I mean by that is just that enrollment is one of the hardest things for coaches. Getting clients enrolled into your business.

If you have a business set up strategically so that you can enroll people in a really easy way, they’re already pre-qualified, pre-sold on working with you by the time you have that discovery call to enroll them. And you’ve set it up so that your signature program could be something that they re-up for.

A lot of my clients literally have people re-up. They might have a program that’s six months long, maybe it’s $8000 to do it, and then, they go through the six months and the coach is able to say, “Okay, we’ve accomplished this, this, and this. Now would you like to continue and do some of these other things that you’d like to do?” And then they just pay for that program again. It doesn’t even have to go to one-on-one coaching after that.

Leslie, because of time, I’m going to end things here, but I just want to say how much I appreciate what you’ve brought to the table and in your own stories. It’s scary for everybody at first. And you just jump in and you repeat and get comfortable — start to identify your own unique way of attracting and marketing. And I love that about your story.

Leslie:

Thank you so much, Rhonda, for having me. It was really fun.

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TOPIC: Client Attaction, Enroll Coaching Clients, Marketing, Podcast, Signature Program, Strategy