473. Why You Don’t Have Clients to Coach

Welcome to Better Than Happy. Listen up, this episode is for my fellow coaches. I was listening to a business marketing podcast earlier this week and they said that the easiest business to make one to three million dollars per year in is a coaching/teaching/expert type of business. It is the business where you can achieve that milestone the fastest and the easiest. And the reason why is because there is such low overhead required, the cost is minimal, which means the risk is minimal and it requires almost no team to a very small team.

So maybe you are wanting to get to that elusive seven figure mark, or maybe you’re just wanting a nice steady flow of clients in your business. Either way, if you’re not there yet, I can tell you the reason why, and it’s probably not what your brain is telling you, or even what your friends or your spouse might think it is. So, what is it? That’s what I’m about to tell you. This is episode 473, Why You Don’t Have Clients to Coach. Let’s go.

This is Better Than Happy. I’m your coach, Jody Moore. And on this podcast, my objective, just so we’re clear, is to change what you’ve been taught and have likely believed about yourself up until now. Here’s what I believe about you. I believe that what you think is real is mostly imagined And what you imagine is actually creating what’s real. I believe that in the ways you desire to achieve, you 100% have the capacity to succeed.

And finally, I believe that joy, love, and miracles are your God given natural state of being. And any time you feel far from them, the way back is much simpler than you think, but that’s about to change. Are you ready? Let’s do this.

What’s happening, friends? It’s been a while since I have done an episode speaking directly to my fellow coaches, building businesses, and I felt like it was time. So, I know a lot of you who are not coaches or don’t have businesses tell me that you love these episodes as well, that you get a lot out of them. And I really do think that what I’m about to tell my coach friends is probably relevant in a certain area of your life as well, with a few tweaks and modifications.

So, thanks for indulging us coaches today. If you’re not a coach, give it a listen and feel free to forward it to anybody you know who does have a small business that might be able to relate to this, especially if they’re a coach, teacher, healer or expert.

So, before we get into the reasons why you don’t have as many clients as you wish you had, so that obviously I want you to know why so that you can then do something about that. I want to talk to you about your niche. Do you have a niche or a target market or whatever words you want to use to describe what you do and who it’s for and who it’s not for and specifically what the transformation is that you provide?

If you are spinning in confusion and indecision and overwhelm and this topic has got you stuck and not able to grow your business the way you want or not able to scale the way you want or not even able to get started or take whatever next steps then I want to help you with that. And I want you to know first of all that you don’t need to feel bad about it. You don’t need to get frustrated or be ashamed. It’s the number one topic not just in our industry but in other industries like ours. So don’t feel bad. I totally get it.

I actually have recently gone through an experience with this same kind of niche drama or confusion as I’m trying to get some public speaking work off the ground. And I’ll tell you more about that at a workshop I have coming up called Nail your Niche. I want to encourage you to come and join me for Nail your Niche if you have any confusion about this topic. Because while it is, again, the most common stuck point for coaches, it is also the most poisonous one, the most toxic one.

If you don’t get over this, you will not move forward with the force and focus that I want you to have to achieve success. And I say that because I’ve witnessed it over and over again. I’ve experienced it myself. And like I said, not just in my industry, but in every other industry, even somewhat similar to ours, that is the case. So, let’s not spin in that kind of confusion and overwhelm and frustration anymore. Come to Nail your Niche at jodymoore.com/niche. It’s happening very soon so, you’ve got to get on it.

But I am going to teach you exactly how to choose the right niche. I’m even going to give you a list of possible niches. I’m going to tell you a little bit about the ones I’ve seen be successful and why I think that is. And I’m going to talk to you about there are actually a handful of cases when I don’t think you need to have a target market or a niche to be successful. So come and join me. It’s a two hour workshop and we’re going to do the work together and by the end you will have your niche ready to go and you can finally move forward if you execute the things I’m going to teach you.

So again, jodymoore.com/niche which is N-I-C-H-E. Again, jodymoore.com/niche N-I-C-H-E. Join me for Nail your Niche. It’s going to be a good time.

Alright, so let’s talk about why you don’t have as many clients as you want to have, whatever that number might be for you, if you don’t have as many. If you do have as many as you want. Great. You might not need this episode, but if you don’t, I want you to listen up. And I want to begin by explaining to you what are not the reasons why you don’t have enough clients. And I want to begin here because these are the reasons that you might think you don’t have enough clients. And I promise you, these are not the reasons. I can say with certainty they are not. So, I have five non-reasons before we get into the nine reasons.

Non-reason number one is that there’s something wrong with you, that you’re just not good enough in some way. That is not the reason that you don’t have clients. It’s not because you’re just not good enough, charismatic enough, smart enough, clever enough, unique enough. I promise you, it’s not about you. Now, is there something wrong with you? I mean, yeah, just like all of us, we’re human beings. Where shall we begin? We all have weaknesses and shortcomings. And yet no, nothing wrong with there being something wrong with you.

Are you brilliant and charismatic and creative and amazing in all the ways you want to be? I mean probably in some ways and not in other ways and that’s okay, it doesn’t matter. You don’t have to be able to help people. So, I promise you, it’s not about you. People want and need a lot of help in our world today. Have you noticed there’s a lot of challenges, a lot of problems, a lot of people struggling, a lot of people suffering? And you have knowledge and skills and experience that can help them. That’s why you got into this in the first place. So that’s all we need to know.

It’s not about you. You don’t have to be brilliant. You don’t have to be super good looking on camera. You don’t have to be good with words. You don’t have to be good at [taking 07:47], it’s not about you. It’s not that there’s something wrong with you.

Number two reason is the economy. I promise you, it’s not about the economy. How could I say that when probably people around you are telling you it is because of the economy. It’s not because of the economy. Do you know how I know? There are tons of coaches and teachers and people in the space of education who are very successful in the same economy that you’re working in. How could that be? There are people who are making more money right now than they ever have before.

There are businesses taking off and growing in this economy, even businesses like yours and mine, coaching businesses, teaching businesses. So, if that’s true, then it can’t be the economy holding you back because that would be the case for everyone if that were true. Are you with me? It’s not because of the economy. Get that out of your head if you’re thinking that.

Number three thing that is not the reason why, is that somebody else is already doing it better than you. People tell me this all the time. They say, “I want to coach on whatever topic, but there’s this person who I first learned about this topic from, and I’m pretty sure they’re doing it better than me. So how am I ever going to be successful? Who would come to me when this other person’s already doing it better than me?”

Listen, I get it. My brain tries to play that card on me sometimes too, but I promise you that’s not the reason. Because there are plenty of people in the world, people actually say this to me sometimes, if I have coaches who are similar to me, for example, women who are members of the LDS Church and maybe they want to help women who are also members of the church in some way. And they say to me, “But you’re already doing it, Jody Moore, so how am I ever going to be successful?” And I say to them, “Hold on. Does everyone in your ward know about me? Are they all in my coaching program?”

And the answer is, of course, no. And then I say, “Is there anybody in your ward in my coaching program?” And the answer is usually no. So, I say, “I’m pretty sure that your ward is a fair sample, a good representation of most of the words out there so I think there might still be some LDS women who need some help, who don’t know about me, and maybe they don’t like me. Maybe my way of delivering these tools isn’t going to land for them and they need you instead.” I promise it’s not because somebody else is doing it better.

When somebody tries to go to dental school and says, “I’m going to be a dentist.” We never say to them, “Well, there’s a lot of dentists out there. I mean, everybody already has a dentist. I don’t know how you’re going to succeed.” And yet that’s the truth. Most people I know have a dentist. But if somebody says they’re going to go to dental school, we say, “Great career choice.” Why do we not think that way about coaching? Because it’s the same. Everyone needs a dentist.

Everyone with a brain could benefit from a coach or anyone who has a problem could benefit from coaching. Anyone who has goals and dreams they want to achieve could use a coach. We’ve just got to educate people about that.

Number four thing that is not the reason why you don’t have clients is because people just can’t afford your program. This is what people tell me. They’ll say, “Well, I found some people who are interested and I’ve talked to them, but they all just say they can’t afford it. Nobody can afford it.” And that is not the reason why, my friend. There are people who can afford your program. You just need to go find those people. You need to find the ones who want what you offer and they want it enough that they’ll pay money to get it.

And they like the way you talk about it and the way you deliver it and they want you to be the one to help them. Those are your people. The ones who don’t like you, who don’t have the problem you solve, who don’t want the transformation you provide, or who don’t have the money to pay for it are not your people. We love them. We try to put free tools and resources out there to help people as well, but they’re not the people that you’re creating your programs for. You’re creating it for the people who can afford it, we just need to go find them. Are you with me?

And then number five reason that I hear people say that I promise you is not the reason you don’t have clients is because, I’m just going to call it marketing doesn’t work. But you can fill in marketing, you can substitute any kind of tool or technology or strategy or whatever you want in place of the word marketing. But people say to me over and over again, “Well, I’ve been posting on Instagram but it’s just not working or I’ve been running a Facebook ad but it’s not working or I’ve been emailing my list but that’s not working.”

It’s not because those strategies don’t work. I promise you, the reason you’re trying those strategies is because somebody told you to try them, somebody who had success with them. So, if they work for someone else, they could work for you. But it’s not the strategy that doesn’t work. It’s just you haven’t figured it out quite yet. So those five things are not the reasons that you don’t have clients, special emphasis on number one, that there’s nothing wrong with you. It’s not about you not being good enough or smart enough or whatever.

So, let’s talk about then what are the reasons why. Now, again, the reason I’m offering you this is because I believe that all progress starts from the truth. I believe we have to take an honest look at ourselves to assess where the holes or gaps are and be able to then do something about it. Now, why do we not take an honest look at ourselves? Well, first of all, we kind of don’t want to, because most of us tend to feel guilty or shamed when we take an honest look at ourselves.

We look at the truth, and then we judge ourselves and think that we should be better and we should be different. And that’s not what I’m talking about today. That’s not what I want you to do with these things. Sometimes, looking at the honest truth also makes us think that we then have to make a change. You don’t have to make a change. You don’t have to solve for any of these things. I just don’t want you to feel badly about not having as many clients as you want.

Tell yourself the honest truth. I don’t have as many clients because I’m not doing what’s required or you’re not, again, one of these nine things I’m about to tell you. But it’s okay that you’re not doing that thing. Maybe you actually don’t really want to. You want to have clients, but you don’t want to do what’s required to get clients. Alright, that’s okay. Just tell yourself the truth, which is, I could have clients, I just would have to do a bunch of things that I don’t actually really want to do. So maybe I’m okay with having fewer clients or not having clients at this point.

So, let’s dive into what some of these are. Number one, now again, I’m going to give you nine and maybe all nine of these apply to you, maybe just a couple. You’re going to have to self-assess in that regard.

But the number one reason I see coaches do not have as many clients as they want is because they are not doing the work necessary to find and serve their potential clients. Listen, I love marketing actually, I do. And that’s what I mean by finding and serving clients. That’s what marketing is to me. It’s finding the people out there in the world who could benefit from the tools I teach and the coaching I provide and the programs I’ve created and then serving those people.

That requires a significant amount of time and energy and we’re going to talk more about investing in just a minute, time and energy and money, but it requires work. So, I see so many coaches who are similar to me in that they are in the middle of raising kids. They have families at various stages and there’s a lot going on, we’re busy, we’re all busy. And our kids are important. My kids are always going to be first priority to me. My family is very important to me.

But I still know that I have a job that I’ve got to show up for, I’ve got to work. So, it’s tough, don’t get me wrong. It’s summer time right now and I live right by the beach, 10 minutes from the most gorgeous beaches you’ve ever seen here in San Diego. And every day I get tons of text messages from people saying, “We’re going to the beach today, meet at this beach.” And I want to go every day and my kids want to go, but I also know I have a job.

I have a business I created and if I don’t show up and work in that business then the business can’t survive. It needs me to work. And I’m not even talking about coaching calls because those are really fun. I love doing those. Those are easy for me to show up for. It’s the other work of finding and serving potential clients that I tend to want to brush off and just go to the beach instead. But if I don’t do that work I will not have clients to coach.

People don’t just come to me because I’m great or something. Some of you think that, I know this. We have a portion of The Lab called coach access and I work with some of you guys live at various events and things. And you’re like, “Well, I’m sure, yeah, you can get people to come to that course or you can get people in your program. You could get clients because you’re Jody Moore.” And I say, “That’s very nice and flattering of you to think of me that way, but that’s not true.” People don’t just come to my stuff.

I go find people and I do my very best to serve people and then I invite people to come and get more and that is a full-time job for me. So, if you’re not working, then you’re not going to have clients, most likely. I’m just saying, if you do, if you could get clients without working, I’m thrilled for you, more power to you. I haven’t figured out how to do that, though.

Number two reason you may not have enough clients is that you aren’t selling. What is selling? Selling is demonstrating to people the value of taking a step or paying attention or listening or clicking or signing up for something or paying for something. And then participating in the execution of something in their lives so that they can have a little bit better life than they had before. So, you have to explain the value. You have to convince people that it is worth the cost. And I’m not just talking about selling your program.

I’m talking about selling them on listening to the podcast. Do you know that when I do one of these podcasts, I think about, wait a second, what am I going to name the episode? Because what I name it is designed to sell you on clicking play and listening to it. And as I’m talking to you, I’m thinking, how am I going to keep people engaged to get them to listen all the way to the end instead of cutting me off early? I’m constantly trying to sell people on taking advantage of the tools and resources that I have.

And yes, at some point I’m offering people something that costs money. But long before that, I’m selling them on stopping whatever else they’re doing and listening for a moment, or reading something for a moment, or clicking something, or coming to something live. And all these things could be free, many times they are. If you’re not trying to convince people that you have something valuable that they want and need then it’s going to be very difficult to get clients. And it’s because people are busy, we’re not paying attention.

Do you know what we’re paying attention to? The child that’s whining at us, the mess in the kitchen that nobody cleaned up and we thought they were going to. There’s just things all around us that are demanding our attention and our time and our energy. And so, you have to sell people on ignoring all of that for a moment and paying attention to what you have to say. If you’re not great at selling, come to The Lab coach access because that is what I’m teaching you is all of the skills of not selling in a creepy, manipulative, pushy way, but just showing them that you have something valuable that they want.

Number three reason you may not have enough clients. Maybe because you are not being consistent. You might be doing some of the things necessary in your business in order to find and serve people and sell to people, but you’ve got to do it consistently. You’ve got to do it over and over and over again. Even when you think you’ve already talked about it and you think people are sick of hearing about it, you have to keep doing it. You have to keep, and by doing it, it can be all kinds of things depending on what strategy you choose.

But I’ll just take my podcast as an example. I consistently publish a podcast every week. In all honesty, it is 10:18 on a Friday night when I’m recording this episode because I was in there watching the Olympics in my house, watching the Olympics with my family and sort of getting tired. And I realized, I forgot to record my podcast episode and it’s got to be into my producer by today to have it ready to go for you by next Friday.

So, I’m sitting in the back office behind my house right now at 10:18 on a Friday night recording a podcast because consistency matters. Because some of you wait for my episode to go live and you listen to it and I’m so thrilled that you do, and I’m thrilled that you get value out of. And some of you will become clients of mine at some point or are already clients of mine or have been clients of mine and I want to keep taking care of you. So, you’ve got to do these things consistently, my friend, not just sporadically.

Now, there’s a difference between consistency and perfection. I’m not talking about doing it perfectly every time. I’m not even consistent at all the things I do. I also post on Instagram. I don’t do that super consistently. There are other things I don’t do perfectly or as consistently as I do this podcast, but this is consistent. The email that I send out every Tuesday called Try This at Home, consistent, not perfect. We’ve missed a few here and there, but consistent. So consistently executing the things that work, you’ve got to do that to have a full coaching practice in the end.

The fourth reason you may not be getting clients is because you’re not managing your mind. This is huge. If you’re going to try to grow a business, especially a business that you are the face of, a personal brand business and then you are the one who delivers the product or service that people are paying for afterwards, which is what a coaching business is. You’ve got to manage your mind because the human brain doesn’t really like a lot of things about this scenario.

It doesn’t like that you’ve got to put yourself out there to be subject to the judgment of others. It doesn’t like that somebody may not like what you have to say. It doesn’t like that there are other people doing similar things for you to compare yourself to. It doesn’t like so many things about this. And we are all different in terms of the things we like or don’t like about it but I’ll tell you my brain doesn’t like that I have to figure out technology.

My brain doesn’t like that a part of this is trial and error and it’s hard to know what’s going to land for people and resonate for people. And even when I do figure that out, it only lands and resonates for a little while and then it stops landing and I have to figure out then the next thing. So, there’s so many things about this that my brain doesn’t like. But you know what I do is, I manage my brain.

What that means is, I don’t just listen to my primitive brain, my instant gratification brain that just wants to go to the beach and not work and thinks I don’t know what to do and that I don’t have good ideas and that this is too hard etc. That part of my brain is still there. I just manage it. I’m the boss of it. The manager’s the boss.

The manager says, “Hey, thanks for showing up today, everybody. I’ll tell you what we need to really focus on today. I know that there’s a lot of nerves. I know that people are really jittery right now, but I promise you this is all going to be okay, that we’re on the right track. And I need everyone to focus and try to set your fears aside. We’re going to go forward anyway.” That’s what I can envision a manager saying in a team meeting. That’s what I say to my brain when it’s time to get to work. Alright, you’ve got to manage your mind. Again, I can help you with that if you want help, but it’s really important.

Number five, you may not be continuing to develop yourself. I know I can be guilty of this at times where I realize you know what? I have gotten really good at certain things when it comes to growing my business and running my business but there’s always a next level where there are new things to be learned. And if I don’t keep developing myself then I can’t get to that next level, I just can’t. I have to keep learning. I have to keep pushing myself outside of my comfort zone. I have to keep trying things that I’ve never done before.

I have to keep meeting people and trying to connect with people maybe who can help me with next steps. But if you don’t continue to develop yourself, it may be difficult to get your coaching practice where you want it to be. We are coaches, we believe in development. I think this one’s kind of a given.

Number six, maybe that you don’t have a compelling offer. What I mean by that is not that you don’t have something valuable and amazing to offer the world. But you haven’t put it together and packaged it in such a way that people want it. You haven’t been able to describe it in such a way that the right people go, “Oh, my gosh, that’s exactly what I need. I wish I would have found this sooner.” Or the people who aren’t the right fit would say, “Whoa, that’s my sister or that’s my brother-in-law. I need to forward this to them.”

If you have a compelling offer it’s much easier, the marketing and sales becomes much easier. Do people line up for iPhones anymore? I don’t know, but they used to. But whatever is the latest technology, those people who want that, will get in line for it. We’ll get in line for Taylor Swift tickets. We’ll get in line for things that we really want even if they cost a lot of money because they’re compelling. So, if you don’t have a compelling offer, you’ve got to figure that out. It will make it so much easier to just get clients.

Little side note, people don’t want coaching. Do not sell coaching, this many hours of coaching. Nobody wants that. Coaching is your tool. It’s like a hammer, people don’t go door to door and say, “I have a hammer. Do you have anything you’d like hammered? This is how much I charge to hammer things.” No, nobody wants that. What you do is you take that hammer and decide what you’re going to do with it. Maybe you’re going to build furniture. Then you can get online and say, “I sell amazing furniture. Who would like furniture in this style?”

It’s for this type of person that wants to have something at this price point. That’s what you do with your hammer. You build the furniture. So, what you do with coaching is you help people transform in some way. You help them solve a problem or achieve a goal, a certain kind of person with a certain problem or a certain goal. And again, if you’re not sure about that, come to Nail your Niche, I’m going to help you figure that part out.

Number seven, maybe one of the reasons that you don’t have enough clients is because you haven’t tried enough things that didn’t work. I hate to tell you this again. I know I’m not the first one to tell you this, but you will have to try things that don’t work before you’ll figure out the thing that works. A lot of coaches I talk to want to sit at home without getting online or doing anything out in the world, putting anything out and figure out with a notepad and a piece of paper and a pen, what is going to work.

They want to intellectualize their way to what’s going to work or have a conversation and talk it through with somebody that they trust, maybe another expert, maybe a friend, and figure out what’s going to work. And if you can do that, alright, do it, I guess. I’m in if that works for you. I just have rarely seen that work for anyone. I’ve seen what works a lot better is that you take a guess and you go try it, and if it doesn’t work, you take another guess and you try that. And if that doesn’t work, you take another guess and you try that.

And that is true for everybody, my friends, there’s not this level of expertise at which now you no longer have to take guesses, you just know what works. It’s a constant game of trial and error and guessing and trying again. That’s what it is. So, if you haven’t tried enough strategies that didn’t work, you just may not be at the part yet where you’re going to figure out what works.

Number eight, possible reason that you don’t have enough clients is that you don’t have a way to get in touch with new people, to find new people. What I mean by that is, people who have never heard of you before, who have no idea that you offer the solution or transformation that you offer, who want or need that solution. You might have a pool of people who have heard of you. Great. And that’s a good thing to have too. But we need to constantly be finding new people who have never heard of you.

Sometimes we call this traffic. In certain marketing circles, they call it generating traffic or generating leads. What that means is just people who are the right fit for your program. We don’t just want anybody’s email address or contact information. We don’t just want to bug people. That’s not what we’re doing here as marketers. We want to find the people who want the kind of help that we offer. And then we want to help them for free, and then invite them to come and get more help.

If you don’t have a way to find new people, this for many people looks like running ads on social media or playing the algorithm game on social media. Most people use social media for this because it’s the least expensive, least risky, and it’s highly effective. That doesn’t have to be the way and by social media it could be LinkedIn, could be Pinterest, could be all kinds of things, but that tends to be the most common way that people achieve success.

If you’re not doing that and trying to find new people and then get at least an email address so that you can keep offering them help and support, you’re likely not going to have a full coaching practice, at least not ongoing.

And the number nine reason, the last reason I have for you that you may not have a full coaching practice is that you are not investing enough time or money or effort. This sort of goes back to number one, that you’re actually just not showing up and working. But this one I want you to think of a little differently in terms of, you’ve got to invest in the business.

The business needs, in order to do all these other things, we’re talking about, the business needs either a significant amount of time. So maybe it just hasn’t been long enough yet and you need to just keep going with what you’re doing or it needs money and significant effort or all three of these things ideally to get to where you’re trying to go.

So, listen, to sum it all up here, we never have a you problem. There’s nothing wrong with you. I don’t care how weird you are, how inexperienced you are, how awkward you are. There’s somebody out there who wants a coach that is just like you. They’re going to be most comfortable with you. What we have is either a marketing problem, a sales problem, or an offer problem.

And the reason we have one or two or all three of those problems has to do with what’s happening in your head, your ability to coach yourself and keep your head straight, which translates to what happens with your hands, what you do on the outside, what you execute. What’s happening internally is creating what’s happening externally. And that is the only reason you have a marketing problem or a sales problem or an offer problem or all three, that’s it. It’s actually really simple because we can solve for those things.

We can get your head straight and you can go take some action and you could take action without even getting your head straight. I would rather you take action than not take action, but ideally we want to do both. We want to execute on externally and we want to clean up what’s happening internally so that we can solve for the marketing problem, the sales problem or the offer problem. That is the only reason why you don’t have a one to three million dollar coaching practice if you don’t.

If you want help with this, come to Nail your Niche, jodymoore.com/niche N-I-C-H-E. I would love to help you with it. Otherwise, thank you so much for joining me today. Like I said, I would love it if you would share this episode if you found it valuable and pass it along to any of your friends who you think could benefit as well. Thanks for joining me today. Have a beautiful rest of your week. 

If you find the podcast to be helpful you’re going to love The Lab. In Better Than Happy: The Lab we experiment with applying all of it in your real life. Whether you’re in the middle of a challenge and ready for some relief or you’re ready to commit to pursuing your dream goals and making them a reality, come join me in the lab at jodymoore.com/thelab. That’s jodymoore.com/thelab.