Something I hear often from clients is:

“I loved your approach with me when we first met. That’s exactly how I want to be with my clients.”

I’m going to give you my exact approach shortly but I’ll first explain the zigs and zags to how I got there.

At the start of my business I went the common FB Ads > Webinar > Discovery Call route.

The goal being, you run paid ads to entice people to click through to your webinar registration page, register for your webinar, show up to watch your 60-minute+ webinar, and actually stick around to book a discovery session with you, and maybe become a client from there, when all is said and done.

I quickly realized the challenges of this approach, for multiple reasons:

1) I hadn’t done enough coaching to know exactly who my ideal, perfectly-aligned client even was, which didn’t serve me well when determining who to “target” our ads to.

2) I hadn’t proven my offer using organic methods FIRST, which I now know is uber importante before leveraging the power of paid ads to grow (something ads experts don’t tend to be honest about which can be misleading and disingenuous).

3) The content of my webinar, by following guru methods, was so surface-level while attempting to stick a knife deep in the pain of my prospect’s hearts so they would realize they needed my help felt manipulative and wrong…

...not to mention the webinar itself gave zero clarity as to precisely what I do for my clients and how I do it, because they told us we weren’t supposed to share the ‘how’ as that was for paying clients...wtf?!

4) The people booking calls weren’t my actual ‘ideal’ clients because of these above misses which meant A LOT of hours spent on the phone hearing “I need to think about it” or “Maybe in 3 months from now”...

5) I didn’t have the ongoing cash flow as a new business owner to support ad spend, which resulted in me not being able to pay my Facebook bill and being thrown in FB jail for months...

...and this is just the tip of the iceberg.

The whole experience was exhausting, defeating, and did nothing for the ‘millionaire mindset’ I was supposed to be working on, per the above mentors...

Tail between my lady legs: I decided to go the Organic Friend / Connection Request > DM > Invite to a free ‘Biz Audit’ Call route.

I quickly discovered that, despite the initial yuck and horror of sending messages to complete strangers…

The invitation and opportunity to provide pure value and service for others, if they chose to accept it, made me come alive.

This is what I could do for people in a single conversation (and why I knew I was meant to be a coach).

Show up, be fully present and focused on them, ask the right questions, mirror what they told me, and give them a powerful experience in just 20 minutes.

No sales agenda or final destination...just serve.

I took a breath and started hearing YES’s to calls.

Some calls turned into clients, many did not (in part because I hadn’t built skill around the 3 things to follow; which ultimately made this model not financially viable).

Applying this method, I learned a few valuable things:

The majority of people won’t be ‘your people’ or won’t want or need what you have. That’s ok. Find those who do, one powerful conversation at a time, and build a 6-figure practice with just a handful of perfect-fit clients

Sales is 80% mindset/energy and 20% what you say (most people focus on the latter; the shifts that count happen in the prior)

Know your “A to Z” process for helping people get results so you can explain it confidently and clearly, in under 2 minutes, without causing confusion or overwhelm

After this little ‘experiment’, my blindspots were revealed and I started working on honing the above 3 things.

I continued having daily conversations. Even when it felt like it wasn’t working, or that I wasn’t attracting the right people, or that I wasn’t good at it. Currently, my team and I speak to between 5-10 new prospects each week. If I’m in ‘recovery’ mode - I’ll dial this down completely.

I invested in learning about the psychology and influence behind sales by an 8-figure sales trainer.

I created an offer that combines that expertise of what I know for the people who would benefit most from having it.

The result? I love telling people about it and people love buying it.

I feel much more aligned and in integrity in my business, working with a handful of perfect-fit clients in my mastermind and coaching programs about 25 hours per week and enjoying life the rest of the time…

And while the above ‘funnels’ didn’t send me off into a majestic sunset, they taught me exactly what NOT to do, to be able to arrive to the approach I use today which really doesn’t feel like an approach at all, as it’s just me sharing my authentic message and showing up for people.

Which...drum-roll...brings me to my current super-simple ‘funnel’ for creating clients:

Potential clients read my daily posts that pop up on their feed (like this one), or stumble on my profile and read my posts, binge-watch a few videos, decide they want to work with me and send me a DM or book a quick 20-minute call to ask a few logistical questions, and enroll rather quickly.

Or

I invite potential clients to a quick 20-minute call where I serve them and qualify them, if there’s a connection at the end of that call I may invite them to a more in-depth conversation where we go deeper, I serve them powerfully, and at the end of that call 1 of 2 things happens: 1) they ask about my coaching or 2) they’re complete in that moment; apply what we’ve discussed and become a client in the future or never become a client at all...and I feel in deep service and in integrity no matter what.

Interestingly, in checking recent data, about 25% of clients come from (A) and 75% from (B).

This tells me that there is a segment of people who will be quick to decide if you’ve done the heavy lifting up-front in your marketing…

And knowing that powerful service is the secret to powerful sales will take you places :)

...both things I teach inside my high-level private coaching programs by the way, ranging from 1 to 12 months. If you’re curious about what it could look like, send me a PM and we can have a quick chat.