Ep 264 — The #1 Marketing Strategy Most Coaches Ignore (That Builds Clients, Credibility, and Confidence)

If you’re not using teaching as a marketing strategy, you’re missing the most powerful way to grow your coaching business without paid ads. Learn how to position yourself as the go-to expert by sharing what you know in workshops, lives, and free trainings.

In this episode, I’m sharing a top client-attraction strategy that too many coaches overlook—teaching. If you’ve ever wondered how to turn your passion, experience, and knowledge into paying clients, this is your roadmap. You’ll learn how to build credibility, visibility, and trust by hosting value-packed workshops, repurposing your content with AI, and educating your audience on what coaching really is (and what it’s not). I’ll also explain how to grow your email list, differentiate yourself from therapy, and attract your ideal client without spending money on ads.

Whether you’re a life coach, health coach, or niche expert, this episode will show you why teaching is the fastest path to getting coaching clients.

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Transcript

I wanna talk to you about something you may be overlooking that could be costing you in your business. I'm gonna talk to you about  a top marketing strategy to grow your business.  I'm gonna show you how you can turn what you know, what you are most passionate about, what you talk about day and night into clients.

How good does that sound? I'm gonna show you how teaching can build your coaching business. So many of us identify as learners, and we're also teachers, but many of you are not using what could be your greatest strength to grow your coaching business. Take all that beautiful knowledge that you have, package it up, and use it as a teaching tool.

 I know as a learner that you have lots and lots of ideas and lots of notes, so let's put 'em into action. Here's what I believe,  teaching is one of the most powerful, really most underrated way to grow your coaching business,  especially with the type of business that you have, and yet there are people around you who have no idea what you do, people that you should be teaching, and I am talking about your followers, your neighbors, your friends, even your own family, and most of us discount all of those people as if my friends are not gonna buy coaching from me or coworkers.

Here's what I want you to do. They will never know about what you do until you start talking about it.  So let's fix that. There is a huge opportunity to educate really the world of the value of coaching.

So if you don't wanna educate your family and friends, let's educate some other people. If people around you really understood what you did, there really is a high chance that they would be interested. So let's talk about the misconceptions, because that's really what I wanna help you overcome, is the misconceptions by teaching people.

When you ask somebody, what do you think a life coach is, and I'll use life coach as the example, just fill in whatever niche you are. If you say, what do you think a life coach is? Most people think, "Oh, well I know what that is, that's somebody to help you reach your goal. They're gonna motivate you. They're gonna cheer you on, provide some accountability. They're kind of like a therapist," which by the way, if that is what comes out of somebody's mouth, you need to say no, that's not true. Okay? There are certain things that really therapists should address, and there's plenty of things that a coach can do.

Make sure that in your own coaching business, you are not taking on coaching clients that really should be seeing therapists. All right? I want you to help people. And the final thing that most people say is  that life coaches help you figure things out.

 And all of those things are partially true, right? You do motivate people. You do help people reach their goals. You do give advice. And you help people figure things out, but oh my goodness, there is so much more than that. What most people don't realize is a life coach is actually not giving you answers.

They're helping you uncover the answers that are best for you. Coaching creates transformation, not just encouragement, and a life coach helps you break free from limiting beliefs.  We know that mindset work that goes with coaching and helps you take action when you haven't been. It really is forward focused and so often therapy and those kind of things.

Again, I'm not an expert on this, but those types of interactions are talking about something that already happened. So we wanna make sure that people understand coaching is about designing their future.  Right? It's about moving towards what it is you want. So coaches can provide accountability, of course, strategy and mindset, all kinds of tools and support.

Here's what I believe to be true though.  Coaching is still relatively new.  I know that sounds crazy because for those of us who are coaches, it feels like we've been coaching forever and we know all about coaching, but honestly, if you ask people around you, there are very few people that really understand, particularly in your niche, what you do.

Many coaches are not clearly communicating the value or the outcomes that they provide people.  Right? The term life coach is very broad. This is why I like you to niche down. Actually, we help our clients pick a coaching title that really defines better who it is that they help and what they do. So I think there's a huge opportunity for growth.

And again, it is free advertising you guys, free marketing, free education, free opportunities to get clients because you have an opportunity to teach 'em. So you wanna help people understand and just become well versed in the coaching that you offer and how you can help people. So what would it mean for you?

Well, first of all, you have to clearly know who your niche client is.  You also have to understand what the pain points are, what the transformation is you provide. So it actually will get you clear on your own business, and you wanna know what specific outcomes you can provide.  Not just coaching provides, but the ones that you provide, like what is your specialty?

And then you do wanna make sure that you can differentiate for your niche. What's different between therapy and coaching for you? If there is anything that's kind of close or questionable, and then just educate people on really the value of coaching. I talk about the trickle down effect a lot. You know, if you get coached and you have a transformation, how many other people benefit from the transformation that you had.

You benefit from coaching in so many ways.  When you have a transformation and you gain some more confidence, you could get a raise at work. You could change your relationship status, right? You could get healthy. There's all kinds of like side benefits to working with a coach on one particular topic.

This is where teaching comes in. Our job then is to teach people, first of all, I wanna help you position yourself as an expert.  One of the things that we do in our coaching is we have a summit called the Design Live Thrive Summit.  Actually created this summit for our clients, for this very reason, I wanted our clients to be experts.  And I wanted them to have credibility from their own family members, from coworkers, just what I was talking about.

You gain credibility when you stand up in your niche, get on a platform, which is just a Zoom platform, you guys, you're not actually on a stage, get on a platform like Zoom and start talking to people and teaching people about what you know, so you can be the go-to expert on that one topic. Teaching will help you demonstrate the depth of what you know, your individual approach, and your unique process.

 It's gonna be the key for you closing the gap of what people really think coaching is to what you actually do. It will also help you attract your ideal clients. So when somebody comes to learn from you, they're gonna come because they know the topic of the workshop. And hopefully in your marketing you've done a good job of explaining, you know, three or four reasons why they would attend the workshop.

And if you get somebody to see the value of what you offer for free, imagine what they might think about what you offer in your paid coaching, and I recommend that you give your best away, right? Don't hold anything back. If you guys have not seen my Canva workshop, I'll leave a link for it here, but I host a workshop where I teach you in like less than 40 minutes how to create entire brand for your business. And I'm talking about a logo, colors, fonts, the whole thing. I explain how to find photos on Canva. I teach you actually how to use Canva. Then I provide 30 social media graphics and we update 'em all in less than 40 minutes. I say all that of course, 'cause I want you to watch the training, but also to just prove to you even with all of that,

that workshop is the best way that I grow my business. People meet me, they get to know me, and they're like, "Dang, if she could teach me that in 40 minutes, what could she teach me when we work together?", That is your job, to find that sweet spot that you have of what it is you're going to offer, what you're gonna teach that will bring so much value to them that they can't not wanna work with you.

 So teaching gets people ready for the next step. It also creates content that you can repurpose, and I wanna tell you that with any type of AI tool. One of my things that I say to our clients is, look, you cannot let that AI tool create content for you until you give it the content.  So you take a workshop, a transcript, you put it into AI, and then you say from that workshop, the actual transcript, create some Instagram posts for me, because I want the AI to sound like you and not AI generated content.

And look, we're all getting smart on that. I can see in a split second when I read something that is AI generated and people are onto that. So I want you to create original content and repurpose what you have. And AI is a great way to do that. Saving you tons of time, and lots of headaches. So you could do Instagram posts, you could do a podcast out of whatever it is you created.

You could do emails outta that. A freebie. It could be a list builder and list building is very important. Okay, so not only is the workshop awesome for teaching. It also is a way for you to collect email addresses, and I'll tell you aside from the number one way that I grow my business, which is through workshops number two is through email. So you gotta grow a list, and this is just really a natural, easy way for people to get into your world. You don't have to run paid ads. Sometimes people say to me, "Well, how much and how often should I post?" And I'm like, "Well, how many people do you want to your workshop?" Okay. That's really the truth.

 You post a lot, you share it in more places than you can imagine.  We're all really busy. I know you've signed up for a bunch of things that you haven't attended. So you actually wanna get like two, three times the amount of people signed up than what you hope to have at your workshop. So bring people into your world through your workshop, through all the promoting that you're gonna do.

Allow your workshop to build trust and to help people move from just being interested to being invested in your coaching.  The last thing I wanna say is that when you host a workshop, you leave that workshop like so excited. It's so energizing to you. It's so inspiring to you.

You'll never know until you do that. You're like walking on, you know, clouds when you leave the workshop. So make sure that you provide yourself a way to boost your own confidence. You'll find out that what you teach and what you know best, that you're really good at it. You'll find out that you know a lot and that you really are an expert, and you'll see that people are magnetized by your energy.

Yes. You'll bring clients to you by the way you show up.  So here's what I know for sure. Teaching is one of the most effective strategies you can use in your business,  okay?

It will bring in clients, it'll build connection, credibility, confidence in you and in them, right? They need to be confident in what you have to offer. You can do it all without feeling salesy because you're offering something of high value.  So if you are not already teaching, if you're not using this strategy, start now.

I recommend to our clients that they do two workshops a month, and I want you to do that too. We actually help our clients write their workshops. We help with the presentation slides, with the tech that goes with it, with the email invites, with the social media invites, all of that. But look, those are all things that you can do.

Go find the answers for those and get yourself set up doing a workshop. If you want help, it would be my honor to help you do all of that and more. We teach all of that, so schedule a time. Have a complimentary business assessment with us, DebbieShadid.com/SCHEDULE.

I want people to understand the value of what it is you have to offer, and I want them to do that because they're gonna be much more likely to buy coaching from you. Okay guys, that's it. I would love to see you on my calendar DebbieShadid.com/SCHEDULE

Learn about what we have to offer about all that we can do to support you as you grow your business.

I'll be back next week with another fun topic about how to grow your coaching business without spending money on paid ads. Until next time, bye-bye.