#211: Should You Start a Facebook Group for Your Coaching Business?

Starting a Facebook group sounds like a great way to build a community and attract coaching clients—but is it the right move for YOUR business? 🤔

In this episode of Make It Visible, I break down exactly when you should (and shouldn't) start a Facebook group.

If you’re wondering whether a group will help grow your coaching business, or just become another time-consuming task with low engagement, this episode is for you.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

✅ The right time to start a Facebook group (and when to avoid it)
✅ Why starting too early could hurt your engagement & confidence
✅ The biggest mistakes coaches make when creating free groups
✅ How to use your personal profile & business page first for visibility
✅ Why paid groups and membership communities are a better strategy
✅ How to do market research before launching your group

Before you spend hours managing a Facebook group that doesn’t convert, listen to this episode first!

Meet Your Host:

Hey there! I’m Michelle Kui—Visibility Marketing and Speaker Success Coach.

I’m the founder of Elevate LifeCoaching, where I help coaches like you build a stand-out brand, attract high-quality 5-6 figure clients, and land paid speaking gigs—all by leveraging the #1 most important asset in your business (hint: it’s not JUST social media!).

My Journey into Public Speaking & Visibility

My speaking journey started early—at 9 years old when my dad voluntold me to enter a speech contest (thanks, Dad!). Since then, I became the go-to speaker whenever someone needed a voice on short notice.

From leading corporate workshops to running training sessions, I thrived where most people froze—grabbing the mic while others sat back, hoping not to get called on.

After working with hundreds of coaches, I realized a HUGE missing piece that most entrepreneurs completely overlook—and it’s the #1 strategy top coaches use to grow their business, attract premium clients, and get booked on bigger stages.

Are you using it? If not, let’s change that. 🚀

🐦 SOCIAL STUFF:

Instagram ➔ / elevatelifecoach
Facebook ➔ / coachmichellekuei
Linkedin ➔ ...

Transcript

0:01

Should you, or should you not start a Facebook group? Let's talk about that today. This is a question I get all the time from my clients, and a lot of times when I browse the Facebook community, I see this question come up all the time. Should I start a Facebook group, or should I not start a Facebook group? I like the idea of building my community and I truly believe that my potential client need to have a space so that I can use it and utilize it to attract more paying clients. If that is who you are, be sure to hit subscribe because these are the topics that I'm going to cover on this channel and hopefully that's going to help you to create and attract more dream clients that's coming to you and in your world. Let's dive, let's go right into it. Should you, or should you not start a Facebook group? Now, here's my opinion and you can take it and hopefully it's going to be helpful., from my personal experience, when you're first starting out and depending on where you are, you might not be, , having an audience yet. And you might be someone who's five years down the road and you already have some clients who's coming in and you have successfully getting clients on your, , one on one coaching. And now you're sitting there and wondering if you should start a Facebook group. Now, depending on where you are on that journey, if you're just starting out and you're struggling to get to grow your audience, growing that followers and. Perhaps some of your audience are people from your past. Maybe it's family member. Maybe it's your coworker and you don't have quite a lot of audience yet. And you're wondering if you should start a Facebook group. If that is you, here's my recommendation for you. Do not start a Facebook group. And here's the reason why. Now, if you're first starting out, your chances are you're still trying to test the water refining your message, and maybe you don't even have a niche yet. So when you start a Facebook group, what essentially you're forcing yourself to be in this place where you're inviting a lot of your current audience, your current audience may be people on your friends list. Maybe it's colleagues from the past. And when you start doing that. it's actually creating and curating, a melting pot inside that group. And some people might not be interested in your topic in the first place. Now we all know that Facebook is a very busy place. and it's noisy too. So if you don't have a specific niche and you're still testing out the water on your messaging, then the content that you share, it's a hit or miss. And we all know what happened when it's a hit or a miss, right? That's a, , , you create this group. Okay, great. There's 200 people inside that group. no matter how you invited them in, maybe you send a bulk message to invite all of your friends to this. Into that group, and so a lot of people would be curious and they jump into the group, but it's not a topic that interest them. So you don't have a big engagement. You don't have a lot of engagement. And what's going to happen is when you don't see a whole lot of engagement, you start internalizing it. And thinking that you're doing something wrong, but in reality, it's just not the topic that everyone who's inside that group are interested to hear. And so what you want to do is hold off on that idea of creating that free Facebook group and invite all these people to come into your group. And until you actually narrow down your messaging, you know exactly what you're passionate about sharing and creating every single day, every single week, then you can consider because by that time, you're probably like, maybe in your second or third years in your coaching business, and then you're ready to create something that's more specific, something that actually has a mission behind why you create that Facebook group. And by then, you probably already curated a portion of it. That, niche specific audience also on your personal profile, or maybe it's your business page that you're leveraging, then use these people, right? No matter how big or small it is, you invite those people who are niche specific inside that group. It increases your opportunity and your chance to actually have more engagement inside that group, no matter how big or small it is. And that's going not only to build on your confidence, but they also give people a reason to be there. And that is, the whole foundational idea, or you want to create a group that people have reasons to be there. Now, you can either do this as a free group. Or maybe you're a little more advanced. You're in the fifth year, six years however many years in your coaching business, and you've been serving your one on one client where there's people who found out about you and they really liked the topic that you're sharing. So these are the people, these are the type of people that you want to invite. To that group, that niche specific group, because now people have reason to be there and they have reasons to engage with your content. So depending on where you are on that journey, you might not want to start out with creating a Facebook group right away. Not only does it require more work for you to do, to maintain, to engage, and when you don't get a whole lot of engagement and people are just lingering around for the free resources and it's not really a topic, they're just curious, Then it's actually draining , your energy and also yourself, your confidence, because you don't get a whole lot of engagement. So that is my advice for those of you who are, still kind of new and you're trying to figure out what your message is. And you're wondering whether or not you should have a Facebook group. Now, when should you consider having this Facebook group? Once you get past over that, you're refining your message. Finding out what your niche statement is. And once you get over that stage, when would be a good time to have this Facebook group? So let's say you've been doing a lot of one on one coaching and Your calendar start getting a little too busy and you would like to have that personal time Or perhaps you're creating a community for all your past one on one clients or clients that you have served There's a reason why they paid you and they started to work with you and you're giving them essentially a reason to be inside this group, right? They're connecting with each other. There's more reason for them to be there. And so they're more likely to engage with your posts and engage and share their status with you more so inside that community, or maybe you're doing a membership and you're starting a group coaching, then you need to have a community. to place , these payment member in. So when someone start paying you and whether it's through group coaching or membership or one-on-one coaching, you want to create that community for these members, then by all means create a Facebook group. Now, you might be wondering, oh, well, Michelle, but what if it's a free group and it doesn't have to be a pay. And then what you want to do is you want to think about what is that mission? Again, it goes back to giving people a reason to be there. What is that reason for people to be there? Now, you might say, well, don't everybody want to work their mindset? Well, Do everybody recognize that they need to work on the mindset? And the answer is no, right? Because a lot of us, we don't know what we don't know until we know what we don't know. So you thinking that, Hey, I'm going to create a group and this is a great reason for people to be there. I would encourage you to get back out there and ask them, ask your audience, what do you want if I were to create a community for you? What does that look like for you? So that requires you to do some market research, that requires you to reach out to a couple of your friends and people, your ideal client, and find out what is it that they want. Now, going through that process is just the same. It takes the same amount of work as you would to find out your niche. I don't know about you, but finding your niche has been big, big portion of our work, right? Especially when I work with clients, , the one of the biggest struggle is how do I find my niche? And if you have to do extra work in order to create this community, you have to come back and ask yourself, is it essential part of that business? Is that something that you really want to spend your time and energy and creating it and testing it? Without a complete, thorough, , research on it. So my advice for you is that if you're just starting out within that first to third year of your business, you don't have a lot of clients coming in yet. And you really are struggling to get engagement currently on your personal profile or on your business profile. If you're currently struggling with the engagement, then I would suggest that you don't start a Facebook group right away. But instead consider using and making sure that you're maximizing your personal profile, your social media, maybe it's your email marketing. I have video on the email marketing. I will link it down below this description so that you can go and check it out. If you are someone who struggle. in that first three years of your business and finding the audience, finding the clients, then I would strongly urge you not to start a Facebook group because that would only create more work for you. And we all know when, when the work is feeling overwhelmed, we're probably less likely to keep our momentum going and continue on this path of building a business. Now, once you get past that stage, let's say you start getting a. Few clients coming in and you are starting a group coaching, you're starting a membership, then that would be a good time to consider having a community built. I hope this has been helpful and if you have not already done so, be sure to hit that subscribe button and also share this video with someone who needs to hear it. And until then, keep coaching and I will see you in the next video.