#242: The One Question That Turns Busywork Into Paying Clients

You've been working on your business. Like really working on it.

The website. The Canva graphics. The lead magnet. The Instagram grid. The CRM you signed up for because someone said you needed it.

And yet — still no clients.

Here's the hard truth: busy is not the same as productive. And until you know the difference between tasks that lead to clients and tasks that just feel like progress, you're going to keep spinning your wheels.

In this episode, Michelle is giving you one filter question that will immediately cut through the overwhelm and show you exactly what to focus on in your coaching business right now.

You'll learn:

• Why new coaches feel overwhelmed (and why it has nothing to do with how much you're doing)
• The one question to ask before working on anything in your business
• Which common coaching tasks actually lead to clients — and which ones don't
• The only three things you actually need to start getting paying clients
• Why your website, your logo, and your CRM are not what's standing between you and clients

If you've been building and building and still wondering where the clients are — this episode is for you.

Resources Mentioned:

• Free Strategy Audit Call: coachwithclients.com/strategycall
• 3-Part Training Series on Client Enrollment Method 

Meet Your Host: 

Hey, I’m Michelle — The coaches’ coach.

I'm a Business and Visibility marketing Coach who helps female life coaches build a coaching biz, get seen at all the right places, and attract paying clients.

I believe your coaching business should feel beautiful and profitable — without sacrificing your sanity, your weekends, or your personality.

Using my 7-Step Client Enrollment Method, I help you build a coaching business that clients can’t help but say, “OMG, that’s who I need!”

More clarity, more clients, more champagne moments. 🥂

Because building your dream business shouldn’t be a nightmare — it should feel like coming home.

 
🐦 SOCIAL STUFF:

Instagram ➔   / elevatelifecoach
Facebook ➔   / coachmichellekuei
Linkedin ➔   / michellekuei
Website ➔ http://elevatelifecoaching.org

Book a strategy call with Michelle ➔ http://coachwithclients.com/strategycall

Transcript

Perfectionism And The Empty Calendar

Michelle Kuei 0:00

Hey coach, let me ask you a question. Have you been working on your business? I mean, like really working on it. There was late night tweaking on your website copy. There was hours that you spend in Canva just getting the graphic to be right, to be perfect. And that lean magnet that Michelle told you to build, you've been building it for the last three weeks, and yet it's still not out in front of your audience. And that's not even talk about the Instagram grid that you've been planning out. You want it to be in a perfect position, alternating pose. It needs to look perfect. Yet your calendar is still pretty empty. And that's the part that doesn't make sense, does it? Because you've been doing everything that you're supposed to be doing. You're showing up, you're building, you're putting in the work, and at the end of the week, you're looking at your discovery call calendar. That discovery call slots is still empty, and you have no idea where these clients are going to come from. So you go back, you fix your website. And maybe that was the problem. The website was the problem. Or maybe it was the messaging. Or maybe you just need a better lead magnet idea. So you start asking Chat GPT, 2 a.m. in the morning, and or right before you go to sleep. And doesn't all these wonderful ideas just happen to you in the middle of the night as you're right about to go to sleep? Yep, it happens to me all the time. Or maybe you were browsing on Facebook group and some other coach, business coach, told you that, well, if you're not on Substack, you should be on Substack. So you're thinking, well, maybe it's a platform problem. Maybe where I'm hanging out is just not where I can find my perfect client. So the cycle starts all over again and again and again. And the next thing you know, when you just learned how to use Kemba, and now you have to learn something else. Well, here's what I'm going to offer you this week. I'm going to offer you one question, and you might want to sit down for this one because you might need to think about it a little bit longer. So I want you to sit down and think about this question. So for everything that you're working on in your business right now, this week, can you tell me what is the outcome of that activity that will lead directly into a client? What outcome does that activity will give you? And I feel like this is a question that a lot of coaches don't really think about. They know they need to be out on social, they know they need to pose, they need to pose consistently, they know they need to have a website because the website is going to make them look professional. Well, they know they need to send something looking more professional to their potential client or clients who's about to sign up with them. They need all these stuff, but they don't know why they actually need it and what is that going to do for them in the future. So you see coaches asking inside the community all the time, well, who knows which best CRM platform would be? And half of the time the coaches don't even know what the CRM stands for. Send me an email, drop me a line, let me know you ever wonder what that even means. So, well, for one, I'll tell you what it means. It means client relationship management, meaning that you actually need to have clients in order to start using it and to actually make sense to have it. So if you don't have any clients, it doesn't really make sense for you to actually subscribe and spend$50 a month just to have it, just to look professional. Because at the end of the day, your client is hiring you not because you look professional, because you can change their life, and that is what they're paying you for. So this is what this episode is about. I'm going to give you that one question, and I'm also going to give you some idea in terms of what are some of the tasks that you can put off so that you don't run into this coach overwhelm. Hey coach, welcome back to Make It Visible Podcast. I'm Michelle Kwei, business and marketing coach for coaches. And if you're new here, I teach coaches how to build a coaching business and get their first and next paying clients. You became a coach because you are good at this. Really good. And the world needs what you have. But being a great coach and knowing how to build a coaching business, those are two complete different skill sets. That's what we fix here on this podcast. Every week I'm breaking down the what stops you from being visible in front of your audience, giving you simple marketing strategies that works, and showing you exactly how to show up so the right client feels you're already reading their mind. If you're ready to start building a coaching business that pays you back, grab a drink and let's get into it. Alright, so let's start here. If you ask most new coaches why they feel overwhelmed, they will tell you that it's because there's so much to do, there's too many platforms, too many strategies, and too many people telling them to do different things. And yes, you're absolutely right. The noise is out there, it's real. I'm not gonna pretend that it's not. Even when you're listening to the podcast, I'm giving you a lot of tips and things to do in your business, but when you go around and absorbing all these information, all these content, when you're first starting out, everyone tells you what to build. Like your website, build your social media presence, build your email list, build your brand, build your funnel. It's all about build, build, build, build, build, right? So when you're first starting out, it is you're in a building sense. So you start building, but in order to make it more productive and actually make it progress and not just something that you blindly go out there and build, build, build, build, build. You want to start asking yourself, like, what is this activity that's going to help me to bring more clients? Like, not in the future, right now, right now. The online space is full of advice, and most of the advice that you hear, they're not wrong exactly, it's just out of the orders. So the things that you've been told to do are things that matter. Yes, you do need to have a website, yes, you do need to have social media presence, yes, you do want to build an email list because a lot of your email subscribers are going to be those who will potentially turn into your paying clients. But you also need to stop and ask like, before you have any of the clients, is building a website or having a CRM, a client relationship management tool, is going to make sense. Do you want to look professional or do you want to be professional and start working with clients and give them the transformation so that you can attract more clients in the future? Where in that case, then you it would make sense for you to have all these different tools to support your business, your business everyday, like day-to-day task. But until you have a roster of paying clients to support your business, having these tools doesn't make sense. And I'm saying this with love because I would love to have you have all these tools. These tools are amazing because it helps you organize, it helps you look professional when you send out invoice, when you send out a contract. It makes you look put together and it makes you look professional, especially, and plus it's easier because now I don't have to send an individual person to this contract. I can actually have this tool inside my CRM, the client relationship management tool, to help me to organize and create a template that I can share with every client who signed up with me. Sure, it would save a lot of time for you in the future when you're working with multiple different clients, you have to track multiple different things, and maybe you have even a pre-work for them that you would like to send out and they you want to look professional to give them an access to the client portal. So all that requires to have the number of clients in order to do so. So if you are just thinking ahead, I would like to have this tool just in case I have clients, then I would invite you to think otherwise. You need to have clients first before you even think about I want to look nice if I impress my client. Because, like I said, your client at the end of the day, they don't care how you impress them, they care about the transformation, the change that you can do in their life. And that's what you're trained here to do. You're not trained to impress your client with all these amazing tools. You're here to deliver the change in their life, and this is why you became a coach, not with these all fancy tools that they have on the market. So the question becomes is how do you cut through all these noise? Uh building, building, and you need a website, you need email, you need this, you need that. Um, how do you cut through all the noise with all these advice of telling you what to build and what to do? First of all, you need to know exactly what are the steps that you need to take in order to build a coaching business. All these, like I said, all these steps matter, but they come in different order, different places. And this is another mistake that I see a lot of coaches make is that they start working on their website. So if you put out a generic website, it looks pretty, it looks really pretty. A lot of you like spend thousands of dollars putting up a website, it looks fantastic, it looks very pretty. But when you actually read the copy, when you uh copy meaning the messaging on your website, the words on your mess on your website. And this is what I find very disturbing because a lot of my clients who come to me, they already have a website put together. And when I look in detail, when I do an audit, when we first jump on to the strategy call, and which by the way, I do offer strategy call where I will look at your current asset, your current business asset, including your website, including your social media presence. And I will print out some opportunity for you to work on. One of the big opportunities I see repeatedly is that coaches put on this website and they have it built. It's built based on the words that doesn't really connect to who you want to serve. So it's fairly generic and it has a really it's presented as if you are the superstar on that website, and which is not the case for when you're building a website. And I keep telling clients, don't put the website up until you have the words, the right words, the correct messaging to support your website. So you always want to think about your copy comes first before your website design. Okay, and that is the rule. If you want your website to do the selling for you, that's always the case. So if you want to write this down, this is something I share with my private client all the time. So before you put on the website, you want to sit down and write down the words and the messaging. Make sure you have the messaging dialed in before you put it into the design, not the other way around. The design will always support the visual elements as the visual element for your messaging. Your messaging does not tailor to the web design. Okay, it should be the other way around. Words first and then graphic design. Because the last thing that you want to do is having a website that looks pretty, but it's not gonna do anything for you. And it actually might hurt you because now you have a website and your potential prospect go there and they're totally confused and they have no idea what you talked about on the discovery call, so they never get back to you, or they just bounce the moment that open their website because they don't know who this is for. And I see some of you like getting out there and using Chat GPT to write your copy, which is great, but you'll still want to go back and fix your website copy, so it doesn't sound very generic. A lot of you just copy and paste what ChatGPT is giving you on the messaging, thinking that would be the copy that you will use. But until you know exactly the clients that you're serving, what they're struggling with, what keeps them frustrated and on a day-to-day life, until you get into that deep work, a lot of the message that ChatGBT is spelling out and giving to you, they are based on the generic database. So it pulls all the data that's out there floating around in the internet and it pulls these common phrases and things and strategies they're putting together and present it in the way that you feel like, oh, this, yeah, this totally is me. This is what I want to put on my website. But in reality, if you look at another coach website, it's the exact same copy, exact same thing. And you don't want that to happen to you. So you wanted to make sure that whatever ChatGPT gives you, you want to add your personal touch. And that's one of the things that I focus on inside our coaching business builder, is that when we create your signature offer, we don't just rely on Chat GPT. You may use ChatGPT to organize your thoughts for you, but when it comes to your own methodology, your special unique sauce that you want to display and put on your website, each client that I work with, even though they may be in the same niche, a lot of them support, for some reason, they want to support midlife women, which by the way, nobody goes around and calling themselves midlife women. When even though it's the same niche, you can still display your own unique sauce on your website. So you want to be careful when you use ChatGPT writing your website copy. You want to make sure that it has your unique sauce. So I went a little sidetracked, but you want to be able to cut through all these noise and all these advice that you hear online. So, how do you do that? There's one question that you should be asking every single time. Like you should be asking this every single time when you start a task. And that question is: what is the outcome of this activity that will lead into a paying client? If you cannot answer that question, that you have no idea of what this activity is going to do to bring in a client, then that task is probably not something that you want to work on right now. It may be on your to-do list in the future, it might be a nice to have in the future. So, for example, creating a course, is that going to bring you a client right now? You would have to, first of all, to create it. So you're going to need to have time to spend to create the course. And once you create the course, you actually need to know how to sell it. So you will need to learn how to sell your course. Um, so it's not going to bring you an immediate client. What will be bringing you an immediate client is when you go out there and when you start talking to people. And I don't mean your social media post. That's not the way that you have conversation. A lot of you, when you post, you're posting it as if here's an educational piece or here's an inspirational piece, here's something that I just need to create content in order to stay consistent. You don't think about okay, so when I post this thing, what do I want my audience to do? And most of you would answer, don't they? Don't you just want them to book a call? Yeah, it's like going to a supermarket and then show them like a new brand new product or brand new thing at Costco, and you said, Here, come and buy it. Who wants to buy it? You gotta give them like slowly warm up to them. So if you look at all these products, big brand name product, they all have a market strategy. First of all, they have a big marketing team who's behind this and doing all the strategic way of displaying the product, showing off the new product. So you want to make sure that you're not just like slapping a calendar link and say, if this is something that you will like, go ahead and book a call. No one is going to jump on and book a call, and it's just human psychology. At the end of the day, it's just human psychology. If you cannot answer that question of what outcome is this activity going to bring for you that will lead to a paying client, then you want to think about why you're doing this. If you can't answer why you're doing this, then you might want to put it to the back burner and say, you know what, I'll come back and revisit this and some other day. So, what are some of the answers that you might come up with when you ask that question? What is the outcome that will lead to a client? If your answer is, I'm not sure, I just know I need one. That needs to be on the future to-do list, not now. If your answer is my website has a clear call to action, I want people to hang out as long as they can, as long as it's possible, and I want them to start reading my blog. I want them to start reading and consuming my content so that they can see me as the expert, then that, yes, you for sure you want to start a blog section on your website. You just for sure you need to have a website, and for sure you know why you need to have a website, and in that case, sure, keep working on it. But you know, that's two different answers for that lead to different energy behind it. If I'm not sure, I just know that I need one, then chances are you are not going to be very consistent with it. I just need one because I heard it from somewhere else that people say that I need one, so I'm going to have one, but I don't know why. That is not a good strategy in your business, and that's not how you build your coaching business. So be strategic about what you're doing and when you're doing it. And this is a problem I see a lot of coaches are doing is that they don't know the order in which these things happen. So, for example, building your website. Does building your website lead to a client? Well, it can. Honestly, when you're first starting out, they don't having a website, it doesn't lead to a paying client because your website is probably it doesn't have the messaging yet. You're probably still working and struggling with finding your niche, knowing what that message is, how to attract it, and you are probably also unclear in terms of what your client wants. Now, I know before you argue with me, some of you might say, I know my clients want a different life. They know what's out there, they know there's more for them. What does that even mean? Can you tell me what that more is? If you can define what more means, then sure, put it onto your website, and that would be great copy that you've written on your website that's going to attract the right client into your world. But if you are just describing her problem in a very vague and universal way that another coach can describe it the same thing, then that's not a great messaging. That's not something that you would want to put onto your website, and that certainly is not going to attract the right client. So if your website is still in, I'm still working on finding the right word, then you wanted to hold up on your website and start working on the messaging, which is the step one inside my client enrollment method. So the first step is to define your audience, and the second step is your messaging. So the two combined together is a process that I take all my clients go through, and it's called the dream client compass. So basically, that first two phases when we first starting out is really defining what is this, who is this person, what is she struggling with? And I want, I encourage all my clients to go deeper than just she's frustrated, she's depressed, she's anxious, she's uncertain. What those are super vague, and you want a deeper definition of what does it mean to be frustrated? What is she doing that makes her look and feel frustrated? So the deeper you go, the better your messaging becomes, and that is going to help you to create your future content, your social media content, your video content, all the things that you do in your business suddenly just become more clear. So that's task number one that a lot of coaches are spending a lot of time working on, but I Honestly, it's not going to bring you a client. The second thing that a lot of clients are working on or coaches are working on is creating lead magnet. Now, if your message is unclear, then chances are whatever lead magnet that you create, it's not exactly what your clients want. It's not something that your prospect wants. It's what you want, what you think would be right, but it's not something that people will say, oh my goodness, she created this. I absolutely need this resource. It doesn't give people that wow factor. So if you are not clear, again, that first step is defining your audience and also your messaging, which I go take all the clients starting from the foundation using the dream client compass. And it's a process, it's a proprietary process where I take all my clients to so that they have the right words and messaging in order to create the website, in order to come up with the lead magnet that the clients actually you can wow them with your lead magnet. And that would be so much easier for people to hop into your email list and getting all the resources from you and that they want to stay in your world. And that is going to bring you a lot closer than in getting a client that way. The third task is building your brand, like the color, the font, and this logo. One of the things that I one of my clients is working on her website and logo, and one thing I remember I always telling her is that don't spend too much time on the logo. People are not paying you because of your logo. People are paying you because of the transformation that you can deliver. So instead of spending all your time on finding and struggling with the logo, coming up with what design, that's what your graphic designer is meant to do. That person is supposed to be the expert in coming up with logo and present it to you, not the other way around. Okay, so your job is to become a coach and be a coach and start working with clients so that you can be a coach. Your job is not to figure out what brand, what color, what font. That's somebody else's job. Don't take other people's job. Just do your job as a coach and get out there, serve your client. Don't spend so much time trying to figure out the brand, the color, the font. That's not your job. So those usually come. So your logo, your font, your color, those usually come as you get out there and your message is clear. It's going to bring clarity to you in terms of what brand aesthetic that you're going to be presenting in front of your audience. I did not have a color font or logo until I was clear in terms of who do I want to be when I am in front of the audience. And that came so much later. My first website was very generic. My first logo was very generic. If you want to see my first logo, he replied to my email and I will share a copy so you can see. It was very generic. I came up with my own, and it was nice to put it onto my business card so I can get out there and start having a conversation. And if you can just take that first step, because I knew at that time, the moment I joined and signed up to become a coach, I knew I needed a paying client. So I had my business card printed, I had everything ready to go, but it was all generic and it was not, I just put it together myself. Went out there, start having conversation. So all the tasks that you are currently doing, I want you to really sit down and ask yourself that honest question. What am I doing right now that is actually going to bring me a paying client? If you cannot answer it, if you're for any reason, your answer is, well, it's going to help me if I keep doing this, it's going to bring me a client eventually. Then that is not the right answer. You wanted to put that task onto the future to-do list. And what you're going to focus on is actually having conversation. You need to have conversation, getting into the room where your ideal client is, start talking to people, go network where your ideal client will be hanging out, starting a group, or join a group where your ideal client will be hanging out, a mom's group, a weekend, get together or hiking group, whatever it is that you can place yourself in front of a potential audience so that people can start getting curious about what you do, right? And how do we meet new people? We go out there and network. Think back the old day when you start dating. You want to make yourself available in all different opportunities so that opportunity can show up. Same thing with your paying client. If you just keep hiding behind the screen, behind the desk, you're working on the Canva, you're working on the website, you're working on tweaking things, then that is not going to create conversation. If you cannot find conversation, create conversation. That is what's going to get you paying client, not all these other work. All right. So this week, what I'm encouraging you to do is use this question as a filter to all the tasks, the overwhelming feeling that you have in building your coaching business. What is the outcome of this activity and how is it going to bring me a paying client? And this includes all the courses and programs that you're signing up, right? Is it let's say course building membership, building a membership? Is that going to give you a client right now? If the answer is no, then do you really need to have spending all this time putting your membership together? How about you just get out there, having conversation, and get coupled with the one-on-one client so that you know that you can do this and you actually know what you're going to build inside your course, inside your membership. That is going to give you better result than anything else that's out there. My recommendation is that you start using this question as a filter this week. What is the outcome of this activity that's going to lead you to a client? Now, I know a lot of you because you're overwhelmed and you have no idea of where to begin, how to start, and that is actually not a skill problem or knowledge problem. It's not knowing what is the proper steps of building a coaching business. Now, I do have a three-part training series coming up where I am going to hand you the roadmap. I'm going to teach you how to build a coaching business following my client enrollment method. It's a seven-step-by-step process where you focus on the foundation, which is the messaging, you create your signature offer, and then you go out there to present it in front of the bigger audience in marketing yourself. Now, how do you do that step by step? You can come and join me inside the three-part training series. We're kicking off the first video training May 5th. That's a Tuesday. You have two recorded training plus a live session with me on May 9th. That's a Saturday, May 9th at 9 a.m. Pacific time. So if this is something that you would like to learn how to do this in the right order, right steps, so that you're not constantly feeling overwhelmed by all these activities that you have to do in your business. Because let me tell you, if you really truly follow these steps, there's not much that you have to have in your business in order to have paying clients. I always tell my client, you just need to have three things. One is you need to have a signature package that you will be able to sell. And the next thing you need to have is you need to have a calendar link where people can sign up to your discovery call. And the third thing that you're going to need is a payment processing platform like Squares or Stripe that you can accept payment and sending your potential clients and an invoice when that person signed up. Those are the three things that you need to start a business, not anything else. Everything else is just noise because chances are the activity that you're currently working on, it's not going to bring you a client. What's going to bring you a client is getting out there, having conversation, or start creating conversation. And if you found this episode helpful, I would love for you to share this with another coach who needs this support. And also, as a quick reminder, if you're interested to learn the roadmap, I'm teaching that in my upcoming three-part training series. And all you have to do is just hit reply to my email, and I will send you the link to join and save a C inside the training. And I will see you on the next episode. 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 elevatelifecoaching.org and grab a free strategy up today.