Why Health & Wellness Coaches Fail (and how to avoid being one of them)
This “make or break” point defines how successful your coaching business will be
A few years ago, on a warm, sunny day, two health & wellness experts met at Starbucks to chat over an Iced Passion Tango Tea.
These two experts were very much alike.
They had the exact same credentials…
The same motivation…
And they were both pursuing the same dream…
They were starting online coaching programs that would allow them to help more people live healthier, happier lives.
Online coaching would also give them more flexibility so they could spend more time with their loved ones, travel more, and have the freedom to live life on their own terms.
And for a while, their paths looked nearly identical.
But fast-forward to today, and their lives couldn't be more different.
One of them is now living their dream!
They have an online coaching business they can do from anywhere. So they travel regularly, often through southern Europe, coaching clients from their laptop. Their calendar is full. And their business supports them financially and emotionally.
The other expert just made the tough decision to shut everything down.
Their business never got off the ground. Clients were inconsistent. Their marketing efforts never really worked. They were broke and burned out. And they had no choice but to find a job to pay the bills.
Sadly, I've seen a version of this fictional story play out over and over again.
How can two health & wellness experts start off in the exact same place, and only one achieves their dream and the other doesn't?
It often comes down to how they handle a critical phase of the journey that every health and wellness expert reaches early on in their coaching career.
The Most Important Phase Of Building A Coaching Business
There's a time in every coach's journey when they have to make some key decisions. It happens in Phase 2 — The Acceleration Phase.
The Acceleration Phase separates the coaches who are most likely to build a successful business from the ones who won't.
Make the wrong decision, and you may never gain enough traction to make your coaching business sustainable.
In my last post, I talked about Phase 1 — The Launch Phase. To give you a quick recap, Phase 1 is all about gaining experience and confidence. You say yes to everything… coach whoever's willing.
But eventually, you reach a point where continuing to say yes to everyone will keep you scattered. Stay the course, and it could eventually lead to burnout. That means it’s time to shift to Phase 2.
For me, that shift happened after about a year of working with just about anyone who would hire me, even though I knew I wanted to work with people in health and wellness.
I gained a lot of client experience during that time. And eventually, I was ready to put a stake in the ground. I started turning down work that wasn't related to health and wellness.
And what happened next surprised me.
I thought I'd have fewer clients. But instead, more aligned opportunities started showing up.
One of those opportunities was to join a team that was helping health & wellness experts create funnels to attract new clients. During that experience, I saw firsthand how powerful a well-positioned offer and a simple webinar funnel could be.
I also saw what's possible when a coach makes a clear decision about who they help and builds an offer around that focus. (And what happens when they don't.)
In short, Phase 2 is about creating a marketable offer. Let's get into the actual steps…
1. Create an Irresistible Breakthrough Offer™
The first thing you have to do is choose the one problem that will give you the most traction… the most irresistible thing you can offer to your dream clients. But that’s often easier said than done.
Let me give you an example from one of the coaches I worked with.
I was helping a gut health coach, who told me something I hear a lot:
"I can solve so many health problems just by healing the gut. So that's what I want to focus on."
It's true that gut health is foundational. The list of symptoms she could help was long—brain fog, fatigue, weight gain, food sensitivities, bloating, constipation, poor sleep, anxiety, IBS, IBD…
The challenge wasn't her gut health solution. It was how she talked about it.
Because unless someone has already been diagnosed with something like IBS or IBD and knows they need to heal their gut, they wouldn't see a gut coach as the best person to help them.
In other words, if a person doesn't have disturbing digestive symptoms, they won't be walking around thinking, "I need a gut health coach.” They're more likely to think things like…
"I'm exhausted all the time."
"I can't seem to lose weight anymore, no matter what I try."
"My skin keeps breaking out."
All of those things could be improved by healing the gut. But the person with the symptom probably doesn't know it.
When a coach tries to market their solution, they often get frustrated because their marketing isn't bringing them more clients.
It's not because their offer isn't good. It's because there's a disconnect between what the offer focuses on and what people actually want help with. Because in many cases, the message that gets a person in the door is different from the solution that will give them the results they’re looking for.
What I just said there is so important I want to repeat it.
The message that gets a person in the door is often very different from the solution that will give them the results they’re looking for.
I've seen many coaches give up on building an online business… and some even give up on coaching altogether… because they didn't focus their offer on something the market already wants.
(That often happens with poor niche-picking advice. The coach ends up picking a niche that the market has little interest in.)
So you need to make sure you focus your offer on something people know they want help with. Of course, it should also be something you enjoy helping people with, too.
If you've focused your Phase 1 efforts on gaining experience, hopefully you'll have a good idea what that might be.
The key is finding the sweet spot where market demand meets your expertise and passion. This alignment is what transforms a struggling coach into one with a thriving practice.
2. Establish your trust-building positioning
Your positioning is what gives you a way to stand out from other coaches. But it can do something else that's equally important, provided it's done in the right way.
And that's build trust.
For health and wellness coaches, building trust with potential clients is more important than ever. With so many people trying to market health & wellness offers, chances are that they've already tried many things that haven't worked. So they're jaded and skeptical.
Not only that… A lot of the marketing out there is full of hype and often uses scare tactics.
People are worn out by this type of marketing. And their BS detectors are on high alert.
A better approach is one that gently softens skepticism. This takes powerful, well-crafted messages that reframe what's possible and gives people a reason to hope again.
3. Create Your Marketing System
Once you have your offer, your positioning, and your well-crafted messaging, it's time to create a lead-gen marketing system. And the most powerful one I've seen for health and wellness coaches is a webinar.
A well-written webinar does 4 important things:
Shows people why they can trust you
Positions you as the obvious choice for them
Gets them excited to get on a call with you
"Pre-sells" them, so it's easier to get them to say yes to your program when you're on a call
Let's focus a little more on point 3 — getting them excited to get on a call with you.
There was a time when people were happy to get on a "discovery call" with a coach. But times have changed.
It's harder than ever to get people on a call now. So your webinar has to make a strong case that getting on a call with you is a smart idea.
You do this by making sure they will get something of value on the call.
Not an ebook, a list of recipes, or a checklist.
I mean something that's going to make a big difference in whether or not they achieve the results they're after.
This has to be woven throughout the webinar. So by the time you offer them the opportunity to book a call with you, they've already been thinking how they wished they could speak with you!
That's what a well-written webinar can do for you.
4. Market your Webinar
Of course, you need to get people to your webinar. Here are some ways you can do that:
Put links in your social media posts and bios
Put it on your website
Present it live if you have the chance to speak in front of a group
If you have an email list, send it to them
That last one raises an important point.
Your webinar is perfect for helping you build your list. So you need to make sure people need to opt in to watch it. That means they have to fill in a form where they give you their email address, first. This is how your webinar helps you build your list, which is an essential part of Phase 2, as you'll see in the next point.
Before I get to that, there's one more way you can drive traffic to your webinar. And that's through paid ads, such as on Facebook or Instagram.
If your budget allows for this, running paid ads is a great way to build your list and get people to watch your webinar. It's one of the fastest ways to test your IBO.
5. Email your list regularly
You need to be emailing your list every week. Even better, email them two to three times a week.
This is important because email is the best way for people to get to know more about you. And the more expensive your coaching program is, the more they want to know about you before they'll be willing to invest.
Over time, your list can become your best source of new clients.
The Choice Is Yours
Remember those two coaches I told you about in the beginning?
If you want to be like the one who started traveling through Europe, laptop in hand, living their dream, you have to master Phase 2.
Focus your offer on what people actually wanted help with
Build trust through trust-based positioning
Create a marketing system that consistently brings you qualified leads
Phase 2 isn't easy. It requires you to make some tough decisions. You'll need to resist the urge to help everyone with everything.
But the coaches who are willing to make the decisions, then build a powerful marketing asset and test their IBO, are the ones who lay the foundation for success.
Not only that…
Their positioning gives them the confidence to charge more because they know exactly what makes them different. And they know how to talk to people about the value they bring when they talk to prospects.
They're the ones building sustainable, fulfilling businesses that give them the freedom they dreamed of.
So where are you right now? Are you still in Phase 1, saying yes to everyone? Or are you ready to make the leap into Phase 2?
If you're ready to create your Irresistible Breakthrough Offer™ and build the marketing system that will fill your calendar with ideal clients, then it's time for Phase 2.
The market is waiting for what you have to offer, but only if you package it in a way they can understand and desire.
If you want help picking the right offer, The $10k/Month Offer Finder™ might help. In less than 30 minutes, it helps you choose the one program that’s most likely to attract your dream clients and get you to $10k months the fastest.