Very Small Business Owners: A Healthy Glow and Following my Passion Attracted Clients:
Stressing out about your website, blogging, social media, email blasts to bring in clients? I was. But which brought me my first clients? None of the above. I have a website, a (quiet) social media presence and lots of plans to improve and add blog posts and newsletters. I love to write, so I feel I, of all people, ought to be getting on top of all that. Still, my first group of clients came much more organically, through the kind of networking that feels most natural to me: in person. Here’s how it happened:
- I walk my talk. I look healthy and when people talk to me and notice my positive attitude, my smile, my healthy glow, and strong arms, they want to have some of what I’m having. (Yes, I wear tank tops and people comment on my arms!) Maybe you believe as I did at one time, that a health coach ought to look like she just walked out of the pages of a women’s health magazine to be that role model. I don’t. I also don’t do anything extraordinary: I eat lots vegetables, drink water, get outside, exercise regularly and generally get enough sleep. Those health habits plus my positivity are enough.
- I talk to everyone I know and everyone I meet about what I’m doing. My enthusiasm and optimism are contagious. My first client came to me this way.
- I look for opportunities to talk to people about their health as well as health coaching. I joined a “Senior Expo” at my local Y, allowed people to leave me their info for me to contact them for a health history, (which I call the free initial consultation) and gained client number two.
- I make it easy for people to schedule an initial consultation (health history) by providing a place to put their contact information if they want me to contact them (rather than having them lose my card or put off calling). For my first event (more below) I actually created specific slots for consultations and encouraged people to sign up for specific dates and times before they’d even left the venue.
- I created an event building on my passion for mindfulness and healthy eating which, while small, was very effective in attracting the kind of people who are interested in working with me and I’m excited to work with. I partnered with my local health food store to create a guided mindful eating experience. Through this experience I discovered my target audience: people who are already interested in health and looking for support outside of/in addition to mainstream medicine to become healthier and gain a greater sense of well-being. Three more clients signed with me as a result of an event I loved creating.
