There's a ton of stuff out there, lists of things to do to promote your life coaching business. That's not really what this is about. We're getting back to the basics here. This entire article can be summed up in two sentences:
- Touch people's hearts.
- Write helpful stuff often for the people's hearts you're touching.
First of all, don't lose sight of your main goal: changing lives--helping people discover the beautiful freedom that already exists inside them.
Your life coaching business is a medium. It's a tool. Its purpose is to help you to reach the people who are asking for you, whether they realize it or not. Its purpose is not to be a money-making machine for you. Its purpose is to raise the level of consciousness of humankind. Money is the lubrication that keeps it going.
The joy is in sharing.
If you're in it for the money more than you're in it to help people, this place is not for you.
Promote Your Life Coaching Business by Touching People's Hearts
Let's get to the practicalities of the matter:
There is a counter-intuitive science to promoting your life coaching business. Because life coaching is so broad and generally applies to everything, and because it's something that can actually help with anything, often what happens is we innocently try to accommodate everyone.
It's tempting to describe your business as something along the lines of "I help you overcome life's challenges". Or a sort of big three all-encompassing categories: business, relationships, health. Mostly because we think by not doing that we're ruling people out.
It's not impossible to reach people in this sort of broad context. There are many that have. But when you're starting out, the helpful rule is that if you try to reach everyone, you appeal to no one.
Start small and specific, something you feel personally connected with.
When people encounter life struggles, it doesn't occur to most people that they need a life coach. They are attached to the particulars of the situation.
When you're having relationship problems, you don't think "I need a life coach." When you're having health problems, you don't think "I need a life coach." When you're having... you get the idea.
When you're having relationship problems, you actually think, "I wish I could make my relationship what it used to be."
This is why you need to be very specific in who you're helping. What are they going through, specifically? You need to embody the language of the one person you want to help.
Only then can you actually touch their heart and make them feel like you understand them.
A Practical Example
I was recently discussing this with someone I was helping reach people. She started with a vague, "I want to help people who are suffering find freedom." We played that for a bit. But then I prodded deeper, then she told me she lost a loved one to suicide.
Because she's lived through it, she knows the language. She's familiar with the thoughts those people think. She's familiar with those fears and hopes. She can speak the language.
What was offering can profoundly help way more than just people who have lost loved ones to suicide, but because this was something she personally connected with, if she focusses on touching those people (and let me tell, whatever you think is "too specific", there are likely several million people in the world struggling with exactly that looking to connect with someone), she really hit home.
She eventually understood that rather than being a counselor, she could be someone who helped people who lost a loved one to suicide.
Reach into your past and choose the dark moment where you felt like you could have really used an angel (there's usually one that sticks out).
What did you think was causing your pain? What did you need to hear? What thoughts were you having? What was did you think you needed? What were the words that would have touched your heart, and made you feel that someone truly understood you and could truly help you?
Forget life coaching, make your entire business around that. Helping people move through that experience.
You are not ruling people out by being more specific, you are touching people's hearts who you can truly help at a deeper level.
Promote Your Life Coaching Business by Writing Helpful Stuff Often
Assuming you've found that experience, that specific person to who you can really relate to, write. Just write. If you don't know what to write, just write anyway. Even if it's nonsense. Write anything. Eventually, you'll feel clearer. Something will occur to you, something helpful.
Imagine you're that person searching on Google. What would they search for? What did you search for? Because ultimately you're reaching back to your past self and helping another human being going through what you went through. Frame your writing in a way that you feel is genuinely helpful to the person you're trying to reach.
Publish your writing on your website (I can help if you don't have one).
Google loves quality content.
Google loves quality content because its engineering team is dedicated to helping people find quality content. They are constantly modifying the algorithms that many are trying to cheat, but one thing is always consistent: their goal is that people find quality, relatable content.
If you create quality content, Google will revolve around you. Google will defend you. Google will work to remove the noise and serve you on a silver platter to the people looking you are trying to help.
Create helpful content for people. Create a lot of it. Be in it for the long run. You might not reach many people while Google is building a reputation for you. But imagine once you get some momentum going with helpful articles over the period of months or years. Three things will happen:
- You'll get really good at writing helpful stuff.
- You'll actually be helping people through your articles.
- People will find you and want to connect with you.
- Google will look at your website with approval, which will multiply the above.
Be in this for the long game.
It takes time to properly and organically promote your life coaching business. I don't know anyone who was able to live sustainably off of a life coaching business overnight. It's an unrealistic expectation, and it generally breeds anxiety more than anything. It creates a sort of desperation, which repels people.
If you don't have something already, do something on the side to make ends meet. If you already quit your job, that's okay. You can find something else cool. It doesn't have to be a full-on career, just something to keep you on your feet.
If you're in it for the long game, you can create a very powerful and solid foundation that you can easily branch out from if you choose to down the road.
