#227: Where to Find Coaching Clients (It’s Not Just LinkedIn)

You’ve probably heard this one before:
 “My clients are women in career transition, so I should be on LinkedIn… right?”

Not so fast, coach.

In this episode, I’m breaking down one of the biggest myths I hear from life, career, and leadership coaches — the belief that your audience is only on LinkedIn because of their job title.

Your dream clients are humans first, professionals second.

They hang out at book clubs, soccer fields, cooking classes, and yes… maybe the occasional LinkedIn scroll.

But if you’re only showing up where you think they should be, you’re missing where they actually are.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Why assuming “LinkedIn = professional clients” is a marketing trap
• Where your clients are actually spending their time (and attention)
• How to rethink your visibility strategy so you can connect — not chase

🎁 Want to know if you're client trained or client-ready? 

Take an assessment to find out what the missing link is in your coaching business: clientreadinessscore.scoreapp.com

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Topic Setup
• 1:16 The LinkedIn Assumption
• 2:26 Behavior Over Job Titles
• 3:23 Where Clients Actually Hang Out
• 5:20 What Social Is Really For
• 6:45 Your Missing Piece And Next Steps

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

So earlier I came across this post inside of Reddit, and the coach was asking, My clients are women in career transition. So you would think LinkedIn would be a natural marketing channel for me. And when I saw that first sentence, and my reaction was, Oh my goodness. This has not been the topic that I talked about on this podcast before. So today we are going to talk about that. Hey coach, welcome to Make It Visible Podcast. I'm Michelle Quay, your visibility marketing coach, and I help female life coaches to get seen in all the right places, attract happy paying clients, and build a coaching business that actually feels good to run. Even if you are still trying to figure things out. Each week I'm giving you visibility tips, simple marketing strategies, and showing you how to create the kind of content that connects with your audience so that you can stand out, build your authority, and attract clients who's already feeling like a yes before they jump onto your discovery call. So grab a notebook, pour yourself a favorite drink, and that's make your coaching business visible. Alright, so here's the statement that hear so many times from so many different coaches, especially those of you who's in career transition, leadership niche, or anything that's other than just thinking about doing life coaching. Now, life coaching, I get it, you have this perception of no one is going to pay me high dollar for life coaching. So there's this belief that if I need to have a six-figure coaching business, if I need to make higher ticket sales, I need to have a niche that would be profitable. Things like career transition, leadership coaching, corporate coaching, business coaching, those are the niche that's going to help me to make a lot of money. But I'm not passionate about it. I'm passionate only about life coaching. What do I do? When I talk to so many different coaches, there's this belief that if my niche has anything to do other than life coach, then I need to be on LinkedIn, which is such a big limiting belief. And so my reaction to that question and that comment that this coach had posed it was do career transition women, do they not have a life outside of work? Seriously, do you really think that the woman who's in career transition, they're going to be sitting in front of the computer or glued to their screen, scrawling through LinkedIn, finding answers and finding solutions. I can tell you, no, they're probably not on LinkedIn for that purpose at all. So the fact that you're thinking that my clients are women in career transition, you would think that LinkedIn. No, absolutely not. I want you to think about, and this is something that I addressed with a lot of my clients too, when they brought out my niches in leadership coaching. So therefore, I need to be on LinkedIn. If you think about your own behavior, most of the time you don't go onto LinkedIn for fun. You don't go onto LinkedIn for entertainment. And when you are on LinkedIn, chances are you're looking for very specific reasons. So I am not going to be on LinkedIn 24-7 just for the sake of it. If I need to go and look for resource, then sure, I will go to LinkedIn and have a really specific purpose in mind to log on and to search for answers. But majority of the time, your everyday women who are in career transition, they're probably hanging out on places like Indeed. They're trying to update their resume so that they can find a job. So where would they be hanging out then? Stop thinking about what this person does. And therefore, LinkedIn is the only place that makes sense. You need to start thinking about the behavior and what are the interests of these women who are in transition. Maybe they're looking for places where they can join a group. Maybe they have every Thursday night they go to a book club. Maybe every Tuesday they have a soccer game at the soccer field with their kids. Where does the soccer mom hang out? That's something that you need to think about. And that's something that you want to research more. Is outside of work, what are these people doing so that you can be in front of them to build that relationship and build that trust? Because if you're solely relying on somebody searching for you on LinkedIn and just once in the blue moon, then you're not really leveraging your social media presence at all. And that to me is such a big limiting belief that so many life coaches, so many career coaches or leadership coaches are missing the whole point of being on social. And so my response was that do you honestly think that they're sticking their face into the LinkedIn looking for you? Chances are no. They're probably busy scrolling on Instagram or TikTok or joining a Facebook group where their soccer mom hangout. And I don't know why I keep using the soccer mom as an example. You get the point. If it's not soccer mom, maybe it's Thursday night. They go to a woman wine and dine club, maybe they join book club, maybe they have some other activity, maybe they're learning how to cook, maybe they're joining cooking classes, or maybe they're learning how to bake stuff. So maybe a baking school. There are so many interest-based Facebook groups or community center and places that you can tap into that you can connect with them. And that's where your relationships start. That's your handshake, not all the time on LinkedIn, because if you think about all the people who's behaving on LinkedIn, you end up getting a lot of marketer pitches rather than your actual potential clients. Because the reason why we hang out on LinkedIn is very different than how we hang out in our everyday life. To me, those of you who have that belief that my client is only on LinkedIn, you're missing a big piece of the opportunity that you could have outside of LinkedIn. LinkedIn is not your answer. And if you have spent the last 30 days on LinkedIn, no matter what niche you're in, and you're still struggling with getting clients, then there you go. There's your missing piece. And maybe you and I need to talk because we need to talk about the strategies that you've been using that lead to nowhere, basically. So that was my observation from one of the coaches who had posted inside the Reddit, and that has been also one of the huge mistakes that I see a lot of coaches who just assume that my clients are only going to be on LinkedIn or on Instagram or on Facebook. That is a huge mistake and it's fatal to your coaching business. Now, if you like this episode, I would love for you to comment or hit reply to my email. Let me know what stood out for you, what has been your strategy on social media. I want to know. Yeah, maybe we can do another sequel to this episode. Until then, I will talk to you soon. Bye. Thank you for listening to Make It Visible Podcast. If you love this episode and want deeper support for your coaching business, head over to elevate lifecoaching.org and see how we can partner together to turn your passion into a profitable business. I help female coaches launch and scale their coaching business faster than ever without wasting time and money, filling the gaps in your marketing strategies, creating a simple and easy to follow system so you can accelerate on the path of coaching business that you love to wake up to. Head over to elevateelifecoaching.org and wrap a free strategy up today.