Join me on this episode of The Abundant Coach as we explore how you can start your coaching business or grow your client list no matter where you’re starting by choosing the right client attraction pathway. No matter how tech-savvy you are, you can learn the secrets to creating a successful coaching business–  Social media savvy, complicated online funnels, and hours spent chained to your computer NOT required! 

Tune in and find the path that’s right for you to start making a profound impact today!

Lauren Brollier Newton: Hey, hey, hey. Well, let me just tell you that today, this is like my favorite topic of all time because it's something that I hardly ever, like never do I hear this discussed in the coaching community online, especially. And here's the thing. So much of what coaches think they should do is what they're seeing other people do online in particular in Facebook ads. 


So this episode is two coaching client pathways. The online path or the community path. And when I say coaching client pathways on both paths, you'll probably serve the clients on zoom or something like that, but it's really like, how are you going to attract your clients? Are you going to do your marketing all online, or are you going to do your marketing in your community in person? 


Or you're the NLP [00:03:00] practitioner for New York city or, you know, whatever it's a small town or not. I live in a town of 10, 000 people done a ton of business here. So it doesn't matter if it's a big town, small town. The idea with doing the community pathway is there's several different benefits to it. 


One, you don't have to use a ton of technology. In fact, the technology is minimal. And this is a very affordable pathway because it's going to be more of your sweat equity and less investing in online funnels and things of that nature. So first and foremost, you're the coach for your city and the greater area. 


So for example, when I started my coaching business, I was primarily networking, marketing, doing all that stuff in half moon bay, California, which is a small beach town in Northern California by San Francisco. But I would definitely go to the surrounding 25, 30 mile radius, right? It's kind of like, think about a restaurant. 


It's just where you're marketing to, who you're marketing to, who you're speaking to is that community. And the cool thing about the community pathway, or I sometimes call it the in person pathway, Is that the community itself becomes your niche. In other words, you don't have to be so niched down like you do online because you're the life coach for that community, or you're the spiritual coach for that community, or you're the business coach for that community. 


One of the things that can be very powerful on this pathway in terms of advertising, I'm just going to go off on a little bit of a tangent here, because it's coming to my mind. You might think it's helpful for you. Get your business on Google, get a couple of reviews from clients who like you. And that way, when people Google life coach. 


Okay. So even if you're not great with technology, if you can get on a simple zoom meeting, you're good to go there. The other thing you're going to want to have on the community path is a very, very simple website. Nothing fancy. It could be a drag and drop. It could be Wix. It could be Squarespace. It could be anything that's just easy to put up there. 


It doesn't have to be fancy. It doesn't have to be connected to a funnel. It's just as a nice looking simple website so that when you meet people in the community and later they go home and they try to find you, they can find you Okay. Let me get really clear on this. I don't want you wasting time building a fancy ass website. 


Especially on the community path. This is something I want you to put together in a day or two. Put some nice pictures up there. Use a pre done template on Wix or on Squarespace or one of those drag and drop places. And you're good to go. And I know the tech gurus and the people who are wanting you to buy funnels and all this stuff will convince you that you need otherwise, but they're talking to the coach whose primary attraction line is online. 


Okay. Now the online pathway, the online pathway means that the primary way that you attract clients is online, meaning yes, you are going to have to run some sort of a funnel. Okay. And if you don't know what a funnel is, let me break that down for you. where it funnels people to your coaching services. So think about a funnel where you would make, I don't know, like a funnel that you would have in the kitchen. 


That's big on top and it gets skinnier on the bottom. Lots of people come through the top of the funnel and then a few become clients. Okay. So here's how an online funnel works. Usually you give away something free, a free meditation, a free website, a free checklist, a free ebook, a free five day challenge, a free something in exchange for their email address. 


If you don't really know marketing and you don't really understand funnels, a lot of times these tech companies or these marketing companies will set up the funnel for you, but they're not great on the strategy for what the actual content is. So if you don't know winning marketing content, starting with the funnel is going to waste a lot of money. 


So I want you to think about the online pathway. If you're someone who's loves marketing, loves sales knows and is willing to get trained in the type of funnel content wise that will actually work to convert to clients. That's willing to hire a tech company. And I would suggest willing to learn enough of the tech yourself that you can oversee the tech company. 


I don't know if you can tell my passion, my like, Oh, putting my head down on the desk. There's just, I've seen so many coaches waste money on this upfront. I've been one of them. I've probably wasted. I don't ever believe in the word wasted. I actually believe everything is an investment and everything is a learning experience. 


I probably invested 75, 000 in my coaching business in funnels that didn't work. And I was on the higher end of the skill scale when it came to tech and content. And I still didn't know what I didn't know. Now, I don't want to chase you away from the online path. I am just suggesting that you don't spend a ton of money up front doing the fancy schmancy funnel. 


So what I'm inviting you into is the path of least resistance, the path of least resistance. I personally didn't, when I started my coaching business, I chose the community path because I wasn't a big social media person or techie person. I was used to being with people in person. It was the path of least resistance to me. 


It was what I felt comfortable with So I started building my business that way. I think about my friend, he has a big, big following online via his podcast and his social media. That was the way that he started his business because he's like, I don't want to go in person. 


Because here's the thing, you can build a six and seven figure coaching business either way. But if you're not good at tech and you're trying to tell yourself that you have to be something techie to build a coaching business, you're constantly going to be banging your head against the wall and vice versa. 


If you're the coach that primarily likes working online and you're good with rolling your sleeves up and building things yourself and figuring it out and trial and error, and you don't love being in person. Why would you force yourself to that option? So I really want to encourage you whatever is your pathway That you're going to pick the one that feels more like getting to you and don't shame or blame yourself If you're not good at one or the other or you don't love one or the other so I think that most people these days are trying to be online coaches not because that's their dream At least for the clientele that I serve which is usually You know, eight mid thirties plus, I would say are feeling like they have to go online, even though they don't love that because no one told them there's another option. 


Lauren Brollier Newton: So community path, online path on both pathways, like I mentioned for the community path, you're going to have a zoom account because that's probably how you're going to serve your clients is via zoom. You're going to have a basic website for the online coach. You also don't need a fancy website because you're going to be way more focused on what we call landing pages. 


An email list is an online database. Think of it as an address book. But it's online and people have given you permission to email them as part of this newsletter or email list. That's going to become important because even if you're going out in your community, you're networking, people are giving you their business cards. 


People are coming to your events. You want to have something that you can connect Keep connected with them with, so you can ask them permission to be put on your list and build that email list. If you're an online coach, it's your funnel where you're going to collect email addresses. It's that free ebook or free something up front that's going to collect the email addresses. 


So on both pathways, you're going to want a simple website, a zoom account, and building an email list. Other than that, the community path, you don't need a lot of tech, the online path, of course, that's going to be your way of marketing. So that's what you're going to do. All right. So let's talk about social media on both pathways. 


If you're in the, on the community path, you might utilize some social media, but it's not a must. Now, if you are going to use social media, which I would recommend if you're willing to do it, do it. But like I said, don't get yourself stuck, not coaching. Because you're not sure how to do something or because you're scared of doing something, go do the things that you're good at first and foremost. 


Now so I do think social media is awesome. I think it's a great platform to be on. I just don't want it to stop you. Now if you're going to use social media, this is my personality and my recommendation now, but if you're resonating with what I'm saying, then this will probably resonate with you for the love of love. 


If you want clicks, corporatey looking things, just inspirational quotes are not the way that organically you're going to grow your business and your following. Now what do I mean when I say the word organically, for those of you who don't know, it's a word Organically means I didn't pay for the advertising. 


I just made a Facebook post, right? I just posted on my personal page or I posted on my business page So when you're doing social media as part of your client attraction method on either one of these pathways, you really, really want to think about what looks personal selfies or personal pictures of what I'm doing or personals Facebook lives. 


Now with that social media, the other way to do it right is if you're going to talk about something that's business related, but it still feels personal and authentic, you want to do what we call a call to action. Tell the client what step to take next. The step could be comment yes, if you want a copy of this ebook, if you're a community path, comment yes. 


If you want an invite to my next workshop in Toronto, okay, so you want to be giving them the next step to take if you're going to be using social media, authentic, personal, that's the way to go now with social media. So let's talk for a moment about why I suggest picking a pathway. I have had coaches push back and say, well, I could do both. 


And she is master in energy medicine. She's been studying it for more than 30 years. She sits on the board of coaching at the medical school at Harvard, just really, really has the chops. She likes to remind us that in physics, there's a principle and it's that the system with the least diversity. conducts the most energy. So what does that mean? We're not talking about diversity, like gender diversity or racial diversity. We're talking about, you have a water pipe and it's pumping water and it's a pipe and the water has a lot of momentum behind it. 


It's powerful. Just going down that water pipeline. If you poke holes in that pipe, that water is going to disperse. The energy is going to disperse. That's what I mean, the system with the least diversity, if it's one pipe and water going one divert direction, it conducts the most energy. If the system is too diverse, meaning there's a million holes in that pipe. 


That's fine, but do not spread yourself so thin that you're trying, you're throwing spaghetti at the wall everywhere. First of all, don't do that. You're not going to have momentum. Second of all, you're not going to know what really works because you're doing everything. The founder of Brave Thinking Institute, Mary Morrissey when she started the Institute back in prior to that, the couple of years prior, like 2004 to 2007, she did one thing and she did it really well. 


She went all around the country and did speaking engagements and invited people into her coaching business. And she generated nearly a million, no, she generated way more than a million dollars because she was at 750, 000 annual earnings as a coach doing one thing really well, speaking and inviting people into her coaching programs. 


She's networking to get speaking engagements. She's marketing to the speaking engagements and she's really good at speaking. And that brought her to nearly it was three quarters of a million dollar annual, very little technology, very little help. And the reason she was able to do that is because she was focused on it. 


I also built my business in a similar fashion. I built my business through having workshops and speaking on other people's stages. And I ate and breathed and slept those workshops and I didn't get super distracted. Now, if I did post on social media, it was about the workshop. If I did post on social media, it was to get on the email list so I could advertise the workshop. 


There's a, a pipeline happening there. That's really, really powerful. Now, if you start trying to do everything, I'm going to be on Tik TOK, YouTube. I'm going to do a podcast. By the way, TikTok, YouTube, and podcasts all operate under very different rules. Podcast is long form. TikTok is short form. YouTube is more long form. 


I hope what you're taking from this is that you can be highly successful. Very Morrissey is a perfect example of that, how she started her business doing community coaching. Now I call her as community coaching, even though she was going all around the country because it was an in person pathway. You can do online if you love that, but don't feel like if you don't have fancy schmancy online stuff that you cannot be successful as a coach, you can absolutely be successful. 


In fact, some of the greatest coaches I know started just that way. This is the other thing I'll say before we conclude. If you're looking at someone like Tony Robbins or Amy Porterfield or Mel Robbins or Mary Morrissey. And you're noticing that they do a ton of online advertising. Let's not forget that Tony Robbins is probably 30 years in, if not more to this coaching business. 


here's the thing. Yes. It's which one you love. I already said that I personally would do community until I've gotten about a hundred thousand dollars annual revenue so that I can have the money and the cashflow to start putting into the online stuff. Cause that's going to be more at the level of fact than it would be to just go out and network, speak in your community, meet people, invite your warm market, do the whole community thing, put yourself on Google reviews that's going to be way more cost effective. 


It's going to convert higher, by the way, anything in person converts way higher than online. Then you can start going. The only reason I would change that is if I was talking to a person who was highly tech savvy, really new marketing, really knew how to do funnels, was willing to learn and had the cash flow to be able to do it. 


So I love y'all very much. You are awesome. Let's do this thing. Let's go make a difference. We'll see you on the next episode.