Katie McManus, a business strategist and money-mindset coach, shares three mistakes she made starting her coaching business: building her website around herself instead of her ideal client, spreading herself thin across too many social platforms instead of focusing on one like LinkedIn, and hiring marketing help before clarifying her niche and talking to potential clients.
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Here are the top three mistakes that I made when I started my coaching business. I'm sharing them with you so you can avoid them. Oh, and hi. I help ADHD business owners make more money in less time with fewer distractions. I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and money mindset coach. Mistake number one, I made my website all about me. Starting a coaching business is really hard because you feel like you have to constantly explain what it is that you do to people and convince them that you are worth hiring. So I made the classic mistakes that most coaches make. When I started my website, I wrote about my education, about all my certifications, about my job history. I also shared things like what my values were, what my mission was with my business, things that I believe about the human condition. I also wrote about my different programs and how people could work with me. But no one ever got to that point because they got to this website and they looked at this website that was all about me. They're like, why should I fucking care? I. I literally would have been better off not having a website at all. And I learned very early on that your website's not about you and it's not for you. Your website has to be about and for your ideal client. And I hate admitting that I wasn't perfect from square one. Mistake number two, I tried to be on too many social media sites at once. Now, let me be super clear here. Being on a bunch of different social media platforms is good for your business, but when you're just starting out and you don't know what you're doing on any of them, being on all of them becomes super overwhelming. And because you're trying to be on all of them and do it well, you're probably not going to do any of it well, because you don't know what you're doing on any of them. Does that make sense? So anyway, when I started, I tried to be on absolutely everything and I didn't get any clients from it. It wasn't until I doubled down on LinkedIn and spent a full year only focused on LinkedIn that I started getting clients from social. And I know it's super tempting to look at these other influencers, Gary Vee, you know, all the big coaches, and think, oh, my God, well, they're showing up everywhere. If they can do it and they're doing it and they're that successful, I should be doing it too. But you forget that they have a whole media team behind them. They have a guy who's following them around with A camera and capturing whenever they say smart things to people. Also, they're in environments where people are walking up to them, asking them questions so they have opportunities to say smart things to them. I don't know about you, but I work from home. If people started walking up to me in my home asking me questions where I could have smart answers, I'd be concerned. I'd be worried about how these weirdos are breaking into my home. So, deep breath. You don't have to show up everywhere. Show up one place at a time and do it really well and get clients and then it'll build. Trust me. I mean, I'm here now on TikTok, Instagram, Pinterest, all the places it will happen. And finally, mistake number three. I invested in marketing help way before it could even be useful to me. Because here's the ugly truth about marketing your services. There are a lot of companies out there who have the capability to put together marketing collateral and they are trying to find clients and it's hard for them because they're not quite good at it. And so they look around for who's desperate and who's desperate as coaches because we don't know how to market our stuff. And I absolutely fell victim to this when I first started my business. Now the problem really boils down to if you don't know exactly what you need to be saying to get clients, how is another company who's working just a few hours a week for you going to come in and completely transform everything you're already doing into something that's effective? They can't. What I really needed instead of investing in my marketing was to get really super fucking clear on my niche and talk to more people in my niche. If you've watched to this point, then I have a small favor to ask. As of this moment, I am 67 followers away from my goal of 1,000. What's so special about 1,000? Well, let me tell you, on TikTok, when you reach a thousand, you are allowed to go live. You also get a link in your bio. And there are a couple different lives that I'm so excited to bring to you. But if you've got watched this far and you want to see more of my content, please go and follow me. One of the very first lives that I'm going to be doing is I'm going to be doing free website audits for any of my followers. I will give you in depth feedback on how you can improve your website and your marketing live on this platform. And if you're watching this on another platform. Then please will you go to TikTok and follow me at Katie kdhd?
