Greg Faxon says pick a niche you've already succeeded in, start charging clients right away even small amounts, then get certified based on what you learn from them. Act professional first, train second.
So I had a woman email me the other day and she was asking whether she should take more training to become a coach or whether she should actually start working on getting some clients. The answer that I gave her is the answer that I give to 90% of people who ask the question, which is do both. Okay, it's too easy to hide in the, you know, I just need to learn more type trap. And at the same time, you don't want to just get paid by people and not be able to deliver value. So. So I'm gonna give you three steps that I recommend you take in order to transition from not working with clients to actually getting paid to help support people in a certain area of their life. Step number one, you wanna choose a niche or a focus that you feel 100% confident in. There's this weird thing that we sometimes do as coaches where we wanna coach people on the things that we're just learning that we're beginners into, because that's what we're excited about. I would urge you to choose, when you start out, the specialty that you people with in your sleep. And usually this is something that you've overcome in your life. It could be a health or fitness challenge you've overcome. Maybe you've lost a lot of weight, maybe you got in a great relationship after having trouble dating for a while, maybe you started a business from scratch, maybe you got your dream job. Choose an area of your life that you've already gotten great results in. And if you can teach it, if you feel like, alright, I can identify the three to five things that I did. I could even start to develop sort of a signature system around this. That's a good sign that you can go and help clients with that. Right? It's not that you're just going to teach clients, you're obviously going to ask them questions and be a good coach. But choose something you have expertise in because that will help bolster your confidence and clients will sense that and they'll sign up with you. So that leads us to step number two. Go get some paid clients. I don't care what you charge, you can charge anything you want. Choose a number that you'd be excited to get paid. Maybe one that's a little bit out of your comfort zone, but not one that's going to make you feel like a fraud. I recommend this over starting with free coaching. Clients do the first conversation for free, right? Have your enrollment call and have that be complimentary in order to outline what it would look like to work together. But when you start working with clients and all you do is free coaching, you'll notice they're a little bit less invested and you never got the experience of actually getting paid to go and help that person. And that that experience is what helps bolster your confidence. I know that it's a leap of faith to start charging for your coaching, but until you do that, nothing else you do will help you have the experience of getting paid to work with people. And so at some point you have to take that leap of faith and you have to act as if you are a professional coach. It's that acting as if that helps give you the identity that you need. Alright, so step one, choose a niche you're super confident in. Step two, get paid to work with a client or two. And then step three is choose your trainings and where you need to learn more based on the work you're doing with clients. It will help you identify the gaps in your knowledge. That's what I've seen work best for the people that I've mentored. And if you do that, I think you're going to help build your confidence while you're getting paid to coach, while you're learning. So that's what I'd recommend. If you haven't already done so, make sure you hit subscribe to my YouTube channel. I put out tips on how to build your coaching business, how to fill your client roster. Please hit subscribe and I'd love to have have you on board. We'll talk soon.
