When building a coaching business, there is an order of steps coaches often think is right. But it turns out doing things in a different order might be just the ticket to business success.
One of the questions that we see the most in our UESCA Coaches Facebook group is, “How do I get athletes?” Like any business, starting out is the hardest stage in the coaching journey due to a multitude of factors such as lack of capital, wearing all the hats and oh yeah… not having any customers. These friction points often leave the aspiring coach frustrated, exhausted and disillusioned.
The most common order of events that most new coaches follow looks something like this:
- Step One: Be an athlete and want to share your passion with others
- Step Two: Get educated (i.e., self-study, certification, etc…)
- Step Three: Launch website
- Step Four: Marketing (i.e., podcast, blog, networking, etc…)
- Step Five: Wish for the best!
What if I told you that steps three and four are in the incorrect order? And if you got things in the correct order, step 5 would look quite different. All too often a primary strategy of start-up coaching business success is wishing and praying. To be clear, this is not a viable strategy.
It’s All About Trust!
Depending on the source, between 90-98% of people read reviews before making a purchase. But why? Trust. The potential purchaser is going to be spending their hard-earned money on something, and they want to be as sure that they are going to get their money’s worth in value.
Let’s go back to the above example of how most coaches launch their businesses. I don’t care how beautiful your website is or how many sales funnels you have, or how sexy your lead magnets are… if you haven’t built trust as an authority, you’re going nowhere.
Build Trust
Conversely, if you start off creating and sharing authentic, shareable and valuable (i.e., non-generic) content, you will establish yourself as a trusted source as well as build your distribution list.
A lot of people might see this as a prolonged runway to starting a business and therefore a waste of time, but it’s actually the opposite. By building trust and nurturing relationships built off of that trust with empathy and great communication, when you do decide to officially launch your business (ex: website, funnels, etc…), your business strategy will be solid and not based on wishing and praying. Because here’s the thing… pre-marketing your business IS ‘launching’ your business!
Therefore, the recommended hierarchy for launching a coaching business should look more like this:
- Step One: Be an athlete and want to share your passion with others
- Step Two: Get educated (i.e., self-study, certification, etc…)
- Step Three: Pre-Marketing (i.e., podcast, blog, networking, etc…)
- Step Four: Launch Business/Website
- Step Five: Continue authentic marketing and scale your business
I Did It Wrong!
So, how can I be so sure that the conventional approach to starting a business is incorrect? Because I did exactly that! I spent years reviewing scientific research to create the first UESCA certification, then built the website, created a logo, secured a domain name and launched the business. Want to know what happened next?
Crickets. It turns out the ‘if you build it they will come’ philosophy might be a little flawed. Unless … maybe the ‘it’ is not what I’d thought it was.
I was competing against national governing bodies and well-established coach education companies, so why would anyone trust a start-up coach education company with an obnoxiously long name that didn’t have any ‘star’ power behind the founder?
It took months for the first sale to come in, which I largely chalked up to someone accidently hitting the purchase button instead of the ‘remove from cart’ button. It wasn’t until enough people purchased the certification(s) and talked about the quality of the content on social media that I started to see the purchases really start to increase. Hence – trust.
It turns out ‘if you build it they will come’ is correct, but the ‘it’ that you need to build is ahhhh, trust.
Why UESCA?
To this day, the number one question I get from people on the fence about purchasing a course from us is, “Why UESCA?” Despite having a website, testimonials, thousands of UESCA certified coaches and a robust social media presence, people still want to know why they should trust that UESCA is the right decision for them. And I 100% get it!
Summary
Put yourselves in the customers’ shoes. Would you sign up with a coach just because they have a pretty website? Probably not. You would however likely sign up with a coach if you’ve been reading/watching their content and love and appreciate their philosophy, expertise, knowledge and professionalism. So, in summation – gain trust first, then ‘officially’ start your business!
