EP 279 — How to Get Paid Clients as an Online Coach | What It ACTUALLY Takes to Grow Your Coaching Business
If you want to get paid clients as an online coach or if you've ever wondered what it actually takes to grow a successful online coaching business, this video is for you! Too many coaches are spending hours learning, watching trainings, and even leaning on AI tools - but still not building their business. Why? Because learning doesn’t equal doing.
Whether you’re starting a new coaching business or ready to take action and work with more clients, Debbie Shadid and Thais Glenn break down the difference between knowing and taking action - and why many coaches get stuck in “learning mode”.
This video will show you what it actually takes to grow an online coaching business and become a successful online coach. Let’s cut through the noise, stop wasting time, and start building that online coaching business you’ve been dreaming of!
In this video, you’ll learn:
The real action steps to get paid clients as an online coach (without overcomplicating your business)
How to grow an online coaching business with a simple business plan that actually works
Why clarity and consistency matter more than funnels or fancy tech when you’re starting out
The biggest mistakes new coaches make when trying to start an online coaching business
What you really need to focus on to attract coaching clients and grow sustainably
How to overcome the mindset blocks that keep so many women from getting visible and paid
… and so much more! Don’t forget to subscribe for weekly episodes on how to grow your online coaching business, attract clients, and build a coaching business you actually love. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCz6RS8kQGMLJqJrK9uKdjtg
Connect with Debbie:
Website: https://www.debbieshadid.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/debbieshadid/
🎙️ Listen to the podcast: Life Coach Business Building School
https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/life-coach-business-building-school-with-debbie-shadid/id1502118085
#DebbieShadid #LifeCoachBusinessBuildingSchool
[00:00:00]
You probably think that you know what it takes to grow a coaching business. I know you've taken all the trainings, You've signed up for lots of courses. Maybe you've even hired coaches. You've scribbled down so many notes. You've journaled and journaled and journaled, and you're worked on your niche.
You're offering your price, but there's something that you don't know about that what they are teaching you, and all those notes that you took, They actually might not even be the best business moves for your business or even for the niche that you have.
all of those ideas are creating overwhelm and they are stalling out the progress in your business. They're keeping you stuck. So here's the truth, None of all that learning,
works until you actually do the work.
In today's episode, I have back our mindset Coach t Glen. We're gonna talk about what it actually takes to really grow a coaching business. So welcome Tais.
Hey, thank you Debbie. So many coaches, Tys, they get stuck in the learning loop and we see it all the time.
They believe that they understand what it takes to build a business because [00:01:00] they have been studying it. Oftentimes they come to me on a consultation call and they tell me, oh, I already know this and I know that, and I'm thinking in my mind, well, yeah, but you don't have any clients, so you couldn't know it too well.
So I know there is this gap between knowing something and doing something. Yes, totally. It's kind of the idea of you you only know how to make a hundred thousand or 50,000 when you make it and you look back and you say, oh, that's how I did.
there are plenty of books teaching you how,we will only work when you do something and you can evaluate, you can assess and change what needs to be changed and keep on growing.
What's coming to mind for me is that so much of the teachers online are teaching about something that is far more advanced than what a beginner coach needs to know.
They're teaching about, what to do with your email list after you have a thousand subscribers. And most of the people that are listening to this podcast have no email list. [00:02:00] So like all the knowledge that they wrote down about what to do with your thousand email subscribers is irrelevant.
Yeah, it doesn't even matter. You know that. Another problem with that, those teachers, they will teach so well because you know, they're trained to be the experts and they make it seem very easy. So it's easy for you to grow social media followers. It's easy for you to grow your business.
It's easy for you to grow an email list, and then you are sitting there in overwhelm because you have learned so much. So you have that information overload and you don't take action. And then we start thinking that you are the problem because it's so simple. Why can't you just write?
So if you ever thought that, that little sneaky thought of What is wrong with me, why can't I just do it? Well, that might be a reason and you might be overwhelmed with so much information and the only way for you to create that confidence is by doing, right?
Yeah. We change our thoughts about ourselves. When you start doing something and again, you look back and like, oh yes, I am capable. I can do this. I am confident now that I [00:03:00] can do, you know, the emails or growing my social media, whatever it is that you are. Working on. So be careful with learning too much from everyone, and then you start thinking that there's something wrong with you because you can't even do one thing.
Oh my goodness. I think about social media and people are so worried about putting themselves out there, and I'm not making light of any of this, because how you feel is valid. Okay, so hear me on that. But you're worried about those things. I have to tell you, once you actually get yourself on social media, what you'll be thinking about is completely different than that.
You'll realize like the putting yourself out there wasn't the big deal. Now there's a whole nother level of uhoh. What do I do now? Because you know, you thought the biggest hurdle was like writing a caption and putting the post. Right.
So this last week, Tyce happened to be off for a day and I actually filled in on her mindset call.
And I don't typically do the mindset coaching, so I'm not gonna give [00:04:00] any real examples, but it is making me think right now about you as you're listening to this or watching it, you might be thinking, I am so overwhelmed by everything I have to do. I have more to do than I have hours in the day.
Like I, can't even get it all done. All those statements that we all are kind of guilty of saying, including me, then there's that moment where I say, okay, now that's interesting. Could you tell me what you need to do? And then it's like everything. And it's like, no, no, no, no. Tell me what you need to do.
So I really wanna challenge you right now if you feel like, oh my gosh, I have to do everything. If you think about what you actually have to do and you write it down, is actually so much shorter of a list than what you expected. And also what we find is once people start saying things, well, I have to do this and I have to do that, it was like, wait a minute, actually, you don't have to do any of those things.
Those things that you think you have to do are not for your business. [00:05:00] Those things might be for somebody else's business, but they're not even things that you need to do. So I just wanna challenge you that if you feel overwhelmed, I would really check yourself on what actually, the fact is, that's what we talk about with the business mindset coaching.
What's the fact of what you're saying? Yes, totally. And that's also why it's important for you to have a mindset coach helping you. Because when Debbie asks you this question, your proud is saying, no, no, it's true. It's everything. I have nothing in the business and I need everything. Well, that thought alone causes the overwhelm.
Right. So you would need a mindset coach to be able to point that out to you like we are doing here right now, and almost prove to you why you already have a lot, and you don't need to do it all right now. But what we offer inside of the business building boutique is the business mindset because it goes one step further.
It's not just for you to use the mindset to understand that maybe it's not everything that you need to do. But we also need to create the identity of, I am a [00:06:00] business owner. Because guess what? You won't just write your website one time forever. You will shift things around, and that comes from the business mindset that you have strengthening yourself the identity of a business owner that you have now, right?
It's not just posting one time and feeling all the overwhelm and all. It's a weekly basis. You're gonna do this, right? We teach you how to do the, basically the five or seven posts that you need and schedule one time for the whole week. And you do it sometimes even for a whole month before you post.
So all of these things come from the identity of I am a business owner, Not just the coach, right? We need to start adding these two identities for you to actually create the business you want. I would like to talk about email marketing because, there's a lot of thoughts that people have about email marketing.
They don't wanna do it, and they don't wanna be pesty and all that stuff. And I'll just pause for a moment and say, that's the most profitable thing you can do in your business. And having an email list [00:07:00] is an absolute must for a coach. But what I'll say about email marketing is sometimes people will say like, I'm gonna send an email or something, let's say, and I'm like, wait a minute, let's back it up.
You don't have a way to capture emails first, like what is your free thing? And also just because you have a free thing, nobody wants it, right? I always say, you gotta sell the free thing. These are the steps that you don't actually know. You went to an email marketing, you know, workshop, and you learned maybe even from me about what a funnel is.
But a funnel is only effective if you have somebody on your list. If you've captured the email on the form, if the form has delivered, the free thing to 'em, if you have gotten somebody to watch the free thing, right? If they have opened your emails up that follow that, and then if they've gotten on your calendar, like that's actually what email marketing is.
And again, most people are learning how to do email marketing, [00:08:00] but they didn't learn any of the beginning stuff. Yes, that is so true. And again, as you were saying this right now, what came to my mind is the fact that whenever we tell our clients that, oh, hey, you need to sell your freebie.
Now. It's not just making the freebie, but how do we sell? And a lot of clients, when they first come to work with us, they have a lot of resistance in sales, right? They don't want to sell. They have the resistance of, it's almost like I wanna give it for free because they love it so much. They love the material, they love the people.
And they don't understand that no one wants it. You do need to create a better relationship, even with the word sales. it's not salesy for you to be marketing and sharing your things. In sales it's one of the most important parts of having the business, right? If you don't have a good relationship with sales,
There's no profit. There are no clients, right? Even free clients, sometimes you can't get, yes, you need to sell someone in coming to you for a [00:09:00] free consultation or even walking through the whole free program. you need to sell them on this so again, that is the business mindset that we teach because you need to change the identity of, no, I'm not salesy, I'm not pushy, I'm not, you know, that nasty pesty person trying to convince or manipulate other people.
It's more of, I have a great program and I know it would really benefit you. Do you want it? Right? That's the difference of identity that we need to change too. So where are you working on your business? You think you're working on your business? And I'd love for you to answer that yourself because if you really get honest with yourself, working on your business is marketing your business every day.
And you might be like, oh Lord, I don't need to do that. Yes you do. Every coach that you're following is marketing their business every day, or you would not be following them. You're here listening to us because I market my business every day, so
I would really [00:10:00] challenge the thought I've been working on my business for the last two years, and I have to say, reality is if you don't have clients you have not actually been working on your business. That's true. That is a hard reality sometimes for us to even say to people.
But it's true. If you think you have been building the business, if you think you have that business for many years, and we've met people, has been building the business, quote unquote for. I dunno, 5, 6, 7 years. But they have never had a client and I was like, Hmm, I'm not too sure if that is having the business.
Let's assess what you were doing and truthfully, make peace with the assessment. It's okay for you to assess your week and come out with, I did nothing because on the assessment the next question then is what we want to do differently. Right. So if you don't know what you have been doing for two or three years as you are believing that you're building the business, it's really hard for you to do something differently.
[00:11:00] So be honest with yourself. Are you really marketing your business? Are you really focused on building that profitable business? And if not, what can we do differently from now on so that you can truly work on your business? So I wanna pause for a minute. We're gonna share some more details about how to actually build your business, but I wanna invite you to subscribe to this channel.
If you like this content every single week, we shoot you straight. We tell you the truth about what it takes to build a business. And it's not to discourage you, it's really to just show you, there are some projects, that's what I like to call it, projects that you have to do to build your business.
There are some things that you have to learn, but you do it one time. So. If you learn it and implement it and do it, and that's what we need to talk about in a moment. That's actually how you build your business. So please hit the bell, subscribe, be notified when we have upcoming episodes, and learn how to get your business built.
All right, Tyce, let's dive [00:12:00] into the difference between knowing and doing. That is such a big one. The example I love using with your clients is, let's say that you wanted to go ski, right? You love the snow and you wanted to see it more, and you go skiing. So what you do, you get a book and you read all about skiing.
You can even learn all the physics behind how to put those skis in your feet and go down without falling. You might know everything, but it's not until you put the skin on your feet. And you get the little chair and go up at the mountain and get dropped there and you have to go down that you actually learn how to ski.
You know what I mean? There's not amount of reading books, of watching videos, of learning everything that you can learn. You will only know how to go down the mountain when you go down, when you do it. And that is the same thing with the business. We can know everything, and sometimes we do see some, coaches where they know their content really well, like how [00:13:00] to do everything, but they have never done that.
That's why when you're watching all of those coaches everywhere teaching you everything, it might give you that information overload, and it drives you feel paralyzed because there's so much to do. We actually invite our clients to not work with any other coaches, not watch any other webinars or podcasts as we really ask them to stop because our focus is not on learning anymore.
We don't want to learn anything. You know what you do. We want to help you take the action and move forward and have that business like the firm foundation for your business by the time we are done with clients. Okay. I have to tell you about ai. I can't do an episode without talking about ai. Here's the deal.
I am seeing this as well, is that people are using AI to create all kinds of content and to give them all kinds of information and write 12 emails and give [00:14:00] them a freebie and write all the social media, but they don't know what to do with it. Like they have all the stuff and then they're like. Okay, I got it all.
Like I've got my whole plan made for the next quarter, but they're not actually putting it into practice, which is like again, really gives you a false sense of like, satisfaction. Like I'm really building my business. No, no, no. If you didn't schedule the posts and put 'em out into the world, if you did not put the email into whatever email service provider and hit send, you didn't actually do anything.
If you didn't talk to people, tell 'em you were a coach. Tell him how you could help him. You didn't actually do anything, so. It's pretty deceiving how good AI can make you feel and how much it, agrees with everything you're saying. Right? You have this really false sense of like, I'm amazing when actually you're not because you're not actually building your business.
Yes, it's true and I like how he said. AI is great and making [00:15:00] you feel good. Yeah, right. But it doesn't make you look good because if you have seen some social media or email marketing from other coaches, and you can tell that it's all AI produced. You know, that doesn't look good, you know?
Right. So it makes you feel like you're so smart, you're so great, you're so amazing. You're so, you know, successful. It makes you feel that way. But you're right. It does not make you look great. So how can we use AI in such a way that we are not interested in making you feel great with ai, right? Like we actually tell you to not believe AI when it's saying how you know genius you are. What we are interested is how can we use AI to help us create the material we need to have the business, the successful, profitable business. So we don't ask AI to do it for us. We do it. And then we teach you how to then use AI to make things a lot easier for you.
So AI is your assistant, not the main [00:16:00] partner. Yeah. AI cannot be your business strategist. I did a whole training on that. AI can only be your assistant. So I wanna talk about what is happening inside of our coaching right now. Because right now people have gone from learning to actual doing and there are so many interesting things happening when you actually start doing.
And in our coaching, as y'all probably know, that's actually what we do. We teach and then they do it while they work with us. TAs, you wanna talk about some of the incredible actions people are taking, and also we won't name names, but also some things that are coming up as a result of the actions that they're taking just to illustrate to you. What it looks like to build a business and what new obstacles you might face on your way to actually getting your first client. 'cause they're also resulting in people getting clients too. That's right. And it's interesting because all of those things that we are telling you right now are things that we already teach.
[00:17:00] Always right? Yeah. But a lot of times when you don't have that deadline to get things done in your business, and many of you don't, you might you think that, oh, I need to make money right away, and yet the rent or the mortgage or the cars are still all getting paid right there in some way. You are doing this, so it's not that you have to, before the summit they have to, they need to finish those things.
So we have seen a lot of clients who had a very hard time before writing emails and now they know how to use flow desks. They're so good at doing this right now. Right. They are showing up online. They're showing up on social media.
We have one specific client. Oh, we are so proud of her that she did a real alive on Instagram where she just pick up her phone and She was speaking about the summit. I was like, wow, what a beautiful thing to see. She was so afraid before of sharing things on social media. So all of those things. We have clients who have connected with people from years ago.
Yeah. They haven't talked to them for [00:18:00] years, and now they sent a message about the summit and this person connected with them, sign up for the summit, and it just gives them the sense of confidence that they actually can't build the business.
It's not just the, I hope one day I'll be able to, I'm building the business right now. This is how we market. This is how we create the results we want in our business.
It's so interesting that once you finally actually start doing it, and we see this with our clients all the time, once they finally start doing it, and they have that mindset shift that, oh, I'm in business and I'm actually marketing it.
What you might have been overwhelmed by what you weren't taking action on. You start taking the action and unbelievably the attention that you actually get and the response that you get is often so much faster than you can possibly imagine. We had a client that sent an email and after two years of communicating with somebody about her other business, she finally sent an email about our design lift Thrive Summit.[00:19:00]
This person responded to her like the very first email that she sent about being a coach. Thevery first one, somebody responded to her that had not responded to any other email for two years. So it is pretty incredible once you do get over the, I'm actually doing the thing now. Honestly, how quickly you can begin to make connection.
Now, I'm not saying you make a hundred thousand dollars tomorrow, but you start building that connection that then can lead to having a conversation that then can lead to the first clients that many of our people are getting for the first time. Right. They're first paying clients. Yeah, and they are making offers.
Right. They are making the offer for you to come to a summit, and that's why when you have something to give to people, it's so much easier to post on social media and send emails. You have a purpose. You have an intention why you are writing these things, but when coaches are just talking about, Hey, love yourself, right?
Like, here's all the self-love, here's all the weight loss [00:20:00] that you need to do. When you're just speaking general things, it's hard for you to come up with that topic. You don't have that marketing message that you can write. And that's why sometimes so hard for you to be on social media, but having the summit, one specific thing that you're promoting makes it all so much easier.
And that's what we teach you in your own business. How can you have your own thing that you can keep on promoting and keep on, showing up? But yes, we have clients who got clients just by sharing about the summit. It gave her the credibility and she got a client. And if I'm not mistaken, she didn't have clients before.
This might have been her first client. and then what I find even more impressive is the quality of questions we start receiving during the coaching calls. Yes. Right. before the summit for some of those clients, the questions were very general. Mm-hmm. And now it's so specific. And when you have specific questions, it means that you are moving forward.
It means that you are [00:21:00] creating not just that knowledge, but understanding what it is that you need to do to have the business. So we've had amazing, specific,questions that you can see that now you are taking the steps to build the business. I have to say. Some might say it almost becomes fun. I mean, I know,maybe you listening would say, no, business is not fun.
I just wanna be a coach. I have to do the business part. But I'll tell you, once people started sending emails, there's almost like a game that goes with it of like, let's look and see who clicked on what and what time was the best time to send the email and what's your subject line, and how can we improve this by resending to people who did not open?
Those are all questions that were born out of people actually sending the emails. Not until they sent the emails did they even have those questions. Yes. In this example, what happened, and I was in awe when this happened, we had one client asking about, what if we [00:22:00] send to people who haven't opened it yet, right?
And we're like, oh, there is a way to do this. And we talked specific, we shared her screen, and she understood and she did it. And then she came back the next day telling us how that worked out. And another client was like, oh, hey, by the way, I tried to do this. I tried to resend to unopened and I didn't remember how to do it, so she asked the question again, which we are more than happy to respond.
The difference here is that you see the question comes when you do the action. Yeah, she wouldn't have asked. She would think that she understood how to send that you unopened, but because she tried in the meantime, she was able to do it again and you know, learn and really understand and do it, and know how to send them.
For sure. I wanna say one more thing here, and I'm saying this with so much love. Please hear this. You should not be talking to your peers about what you should do in your business. I'm thinking [00:23:00] about many circumstances, and particularly in the last week, I had two consultation calls of women who came and they were working on their business.
And when I said, who are you working on your business with? They had been working on their business with their coaching peers, and the truth is, if your coaching peer is not a business coach or has not had a successful business. They should not be advising you on what to do. And again, this feels really useful to be working or having a coworking session, which, look, I'm in favor of all of that, but the truth is you should be onto yourself that those things are probably not moving the needle forward.
You're not getting the best advice. It's almost falls into that same category that we talked about earlier, which is you watching more trainings and doing more stuff and not really getting the answers you need for your own business. Yes. And if you are doing this with a peer, you are trying to learn from someone who also doesn't know.
Yes. Tais was a client of ours, just a few years [00:24:00] back. And when she started, I remember telling her and the other ladies that were in the group at the time, no more wasting time having peer coaching. No more wasting time, getting together with your friends, your coaching friends, and talking about your business no more because we need to take that time and we need to use it for actual business building activities, which is doing their marketing, not talking about the marketing. It's taking, you know, we have processes and examples and things you can copy and all that, but it's really like stop that if you're really in business, let's you know, take that time and energy and effort and move it in the direction of getting clients.
Yes. I don't think there are a lot of coaches, especially in our program who needs to learn more coaching. Yeah, they need to do the work to build a business, right? Yep. And if you are thinking right now, actually I do need practice coaching, which I hear this a lot on consultations as well. I would challenge you and say, I don't think that's true, because [00:25:00] chances are, and I ask this question every time it comes up within your niche and what you wanna coach around, do you happen to know one thing more than your ideal client?
And of course the answer is, well, yeah. And I'm like, okay, then you don't need to practice. You don't need to practice 'cause you already know more than the other person knows. And I'll also say this about practice coaching is when you're practicing with a coach who also knows you're practicing. That's not actually learning how to coach.
So I would just put on your, you know, big girl pants and get your mind straight that I actually do know how to coach that actually do know something more than somebody else and just go experience coaching, like with real potential people. Go experience coaching.
yes, that is so true. I agree with everything you just said.
Okay, you guys, we've kind of given it to you today. We talked about stop all the learning, what it really takes to build a business is doing the things. Okay? So if any of this is resonating with you, I would love to hear from you.
Make sure you [00:26:00] comment below and tell us what your big takeaway was. I wanna make sure that you also are able to start building your business. We have an incredible training that I wanna offer to you. Comment the word start and we will send you an actual process for getting your business started. Here's the key takeaway.
The knowledge that you're learning will not build your business. It's actually the action steps, it's the implementation, and then followed by getting clarity on how do I improve that next step. That is actually how you build your business. Yes. I think my biggest takeaway from talking to you about this right now is that you learning more might be hurting your business, right?
It might be taking away from you, taking action, doing something. Just listen. If you have heard from one coach telling you that you need to have a 12 email sequence when you send a freebie and then you listen to another one that says three, and then you listen to another one talking about how, anyways it gets to a point [00:27:00] where now you are so overwhelmed with so much information and you haven't done anything, you can't sit down and write one email, right? And that is exactly what we help you with in our program here. and when you comment the word start, this is what you receive.
We want you to do the business, not just learn. Yeah, and that is, that to me was the biggest takeaway. Yes, knowledge will not build your business. You need to do it, and that is our focus.
All right. Here's the last challenge. Write one email today. Again, Tys mentioned 12 email series, three email series, whatever it is.
It all starts with one email, so that's your challenge. You guys go have an amazing week. Thank you for being here. Don't forget to subscribe and follow and be notified when we put out our next episode. We'll see y'all soon.
