Greg Faxon shares how to handle a full coaching practice without compromising quality. He covers pricing strategies, client limits, and setting up a waitlist to manage demand while keeping your integrity intact.
Questions this video answers
Five clients.
30 conversations (aim).
Booked about 21 conversations; about 10 conversations had taken place.
He offered to 7 people and 4 signed up (conversion >50%).
$500 per month for a three-month package, or $1,250 upfront.
Chapters
What do you do when you have people who want your coaching and not enough spots to go around? It's a good problem to have, right? It's great to have demand exceed supply and to have a lot of leads for your coaching, but to only want to take on a certain number of clients at a time. So when I started this challenge to myself, where I was going to start a new fitness coaching business, a business in a totally different niche than my current coaching business, I decided I only want to take on five clients. I. Alright. And that's because, number one, I want to make sure that each one of those clients for this first round can have a lot of my personal attention so I can create great case studies which will lead obviously to success down the road. And so that I know that my process is solid. Right. The second reason is because I have an existing business helping coaches get clients, and we have a live event in September. So I have a lot going on. And so I decided to cap my roster at five clients for now. And so as I started off in this new business, I challenged myself to schedule 30 coaching conversations with my potential clients. And that's following a process that I teach in my course coaching business bootcamp. And you put out a free session offer on Facebook and Instagram and via email, and you start to fill your calendar with people who are willing and able to pay for what you're offering, people who are at least interested. And so I booked about 21 conversations at this point last week. I had about 10 of those conversations and I offered my coaching to. To seven of those people. Now, out of the seven people who I talked to, I offered my coaching to, I actually got four clients. That's an above 50% conversion rate, which is excellent. It's really good. The problem is now I only have one spot left, right? Because I decided I was going to take on five clients and I have four already. I'm only about halfway through the conversations I've booked and I haven't even booked 30 conversations. And so I've had to make the decision, what do I want to do about that? And there's really three options. The first option is, is to decide that I want to take on more than five clients to actually make my roster larger. The problem with that is it feels a little bit dishonest, right? Because I've been telling people, you know, I'm only taking on five clients this round. And if you tell people something and then you kind of change the game, you change the rules, to me, that's not in Total integrity. So that's the least compelling option to me. I'd still like to keep my roster capped at five clients and I can take on more in the future if I decide I want to make my roster bigger. But for this round I still want to stick to five clients. I feel like that's the most honest thing. It's also the thing that allows me to focus on my other priorities in my current business, focus on filling my live event and everything else that I have going on. So I'm going to stick to the five clients. The second option is to raise my prices. Now in most cases, this is what I would recommend if demand is exceeding supply. In other words, if you have more leads than spots on your roster and if you're converting above 50%, in other words, more than half the people you talk to end up signing on with you, that's a pretty good sign that you should raise your prices. Now I know that my prices are low relative to my current business. I'm charging 500amonth for a three month package or 1,250 upfront. That's my current pricing in this new niche for fitness coaching and that is low relative to what I'm charging in my current business. It's high relative to a lot of coaches, but if you understand how to do sales and marketing, it's on the low end for most people. I would recommend raise your price at this point if you have more demand than supply. The problem is this is my first round of clients in the new niche. I've never helped people lose weight on a paid basis in a coaching context before. And because of that I feel like it's a little bit early to raise prices. And even though I probably could do it and get away with it and that would be one way to deal with all the leads I have and, and not having many spots, it still doesn't feel very honest to me. And so I always like with the first point about making my roster larger, my rule of thumb is always go with the thing that feels most in integrity, that feels most honest and most transparent. So for me, I'd like to stick with my pricing for these first five clients. Okay, it doesn't make sense for me to raise my pricing now just because I'd like to see how this goes to get great results for people in this first round and then I, I can raise my pricing from there. The best thing you can do pricing wise is to have a full client roster. Because if you're always having a full client roster, you can always be confident that if you raise your prices, you're set because you already have all the clients that you need. So I probably will raise my prices, but not at this point. The third option to deal with all of these conversations I have coming up where I only have one spot to take on a client, is to not schedule any more conversations. Okay, so originally I had promised to Schedule 30 conversations, but in my specific situation scenario where I'm converting really high on those conversations, I have another business to run and I don't have a lot of time. You know, I've been thinking about it and I've decided, even though my ego kind of wants to book 30 conversations just to say that I did it, I really don't need those conversations. And actually it would take me time both to schedule more conversations that I have to post and reach out to people and to have the conversations. And I really can't justify this right now given that I'm almost at my 5 client goal. So I'm going to go ahead and stop at these 21 conversations. I'm just going to continue on with the conversations I already have booked, and then the next thing I'm going to do is start to create a wait list. So regardless of any of these strategies that you do, whether you decide to take on more clients, whether you decide to raise your prices, or whether you decide to just stop booking more conversations with potential clients, it's really important to know how to create a waitlist. So here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to have my strategy sessions the exact same way as I would if I did have space for a client. But at the end of that conversation, once I've clarified their goals, their obstacles, their challenges, and their situation, I'm going to tell them a little bit about what it looks like to work with me. I'm not going to tell them the price, but I'm going to ask if they'd be interested in working with me. If they are, then I'm going to let them know, you know what? I don't have any space left on my roster right now for this round. Would you like me to reach back out in two, three months when that space is open? Would you like to be put on a wait list if they say yes to that? I put their name on a list. I set myself a reminder to reach out to them once I have a space open on my roster. And that's how you get really warm leads, waiting as soon as you have a spot on your roster. Which is a great position to be in because you can continually come from a place of abundance. So I'm going to start that wait list, I'm going to finish out the conversations I have, not going to book anymore and then once my roster is full I'll consider raising my prices or I'll consider, you know, taking on more clients but that's not going to happen in this first three month period of the business because I just want to focus on the clients that I'm serving and creating great case studies. Alright, hope that was helpful and we will talk soon. Hey I hope you liked that video. If you want more content like it, please subscribe to my YouTube channel. There's a big red button says subscribe on it and if you click that then you'll get notified when I upload new videos. I'm going to be documenting my whole journey of building this coaching business and I'd love you to follow along.
