#310: The Best Way To Promote Your 1:1 Health Coaching Program

Hello there, health coaches, thank you so much for joining me today. It is a beautiful fall day here in New York. I hope you're having a good one wherever you are. We got a question in our Facebook group just a couple days ago and I thought this is something to really talk about because as you'll see, this question is speaking specifically about Black Friday, which is coming up, which is crazy, but really any time of year, how do you promote your one-on-one health coaching program? And I know that this is something that we struggle with. I know everyone listening to this podcast probably wishes that they had more one-on-one clients. Yes. Just say yes in the comments. If you're here with me as I record live into our Facebook group, it's the perennial problem. That's why I'm here to help. So here is what Allie posted in our Facebook group the other day, and Allie, if you're listening or if you're watching, please say hello.

Allie said, I want to do an end of the year discount offer for my online coaching program. When's the best time to do this so that I don't get lost in the Black Friday chaos And without coming across as to New Year's resolution, I want to just offer a last call for 2024 price kind of promo before the holiday madness. Any thoughts are very much appreciated. So first of all, if you've ever done any kind of Black Friday deal or last call pricing, tell us how that went. Use the chat area here inside our Facebook group. If you're listening to this via podcast later, come on over to the Health Coach Power Community Facebook group, and I'd love to talk about this. We have about a month, maybe five weeks to go until Black Friday and it's a good time to think about this kind of thing.

I just want to back up the truck here and Allie let you know that one thing I definitely don't recommend is ever discounting an existing coaching program. So if your brand new to coaching or if you have a new program, bringing the price up gradually makes a lot of sense. Some sort of step up pricing. That's something I teach inside of Fast Track, but what we don't want to do is discount our one-on-one services where really truly we're being paid for this very hands-on time with the client. It's a premium offer no matter how you slice it. So we're not discounting. I like much better what Allie said about offering a last call for 2024 price. That's something that you can certainly do and we've talked about that in past years. That way you're not discounting, you're just letting people know that the price will go up January and that makes sense because prices tend to go up in the new year.

So I like all of those things, but more to the point, how can we promote our one-on-one coaching, not just on this one particular day where people are looking for a hot deal, but all year long, there are some key factors that come into play. Again, any point during the year when a new client is deciding to enroll in your one-on-one coaching program, I kind of broke this down into three main factors and I'm going to talk about all three today. I think one of them, which is the idea of urgency comes into play with Black Friday or a discount or a limited time deal, but that's just one small piece of what's going to make somebody say yes. What's going to combine everything that we talk about today? What I find to be the most effective way to get people actually interested in working with you and ready to spend the money and ready to say yes now is a strategy that I've used many, many times in my own coaching business and it's a three day challenge.

In fact, I believe in the power of a three day challenge. So very much I'm actually going to be walking health coaches through the process so you can see how it works and teaching you how to put together your own three-day challenge in just a couple weeks. So I want to encourage you to sign up for that. It's completely free to participate with us. You'll go to healthcoachpower.com/build. I'm going to help you build your three day challenge, which is going to help build your mailing list, which is going to help build your client roster. Everything has to work together, especially these three factors that have to come together when someone's going. Yeah, I think I am going to invest my time, my energy, my money into working with this health coach. So if you haven't already signed up for Build Your List of the Three Day Challenge, head on over to that url.
I just dropped it into the Facebook group. If you're listening, it's healthcoachpower.com/build. We start on October 22nd. Even if you're busy that week, you can't do it. That's okay. Sign up anyway. You're going to get access to all the materials so that you can participate and do it on your own schedule. Alright, so let's get into the three factors that are going to make somebody say yes. I don't think this first one is going to be a surprise, but remember, if you're doing a sale or a discount, we might forget about the trust factor in coaching. The trust factor is everything. People are not going to hire you if they don't like you, if they don't want to be around you, if they're not vibing off your energy, right? I mean, honestly, of all three, this is the most important because people will find the money, they will find the time, they will reprioritize their life if they're just like, oh my God, I need to be around this person.

I'm sure you've met people like that in your life where you're just being around this person makes me want to do better, inspires me, makes me get up in the morning with a new vigor or a new spirit for life. So how can you build a trust factor with those in your audience and with perfect strangers? So over time, that's what an email list is really for. We're sending emails, we're communicating with our audience week in and week out so that over time we can build up this trust factor so that when we have an offer, people are like, yes, of course I'm going to hire this person. They're consistently in my inbox. They always make me laugh or they always make me feel good or they always have useful information. I trust them. I feel like I know them. So important. But when you run a three day challenge, you can really pack a lot of that know, like, and trust building into three days.

So whether someone has been in your world for a long time, this is a nice immersion for them to spend three days with you or if you have new people coming into your audience, and that is the idea when you're offering a free event, it helps you build buzz, it gives you something to talk about. It gives you something to offer new people, friends will invite friends, they'll invite family. So now you have all these new faces in your world. We don't necessarily want someone to hang out on our mailing list for two years, three years, five years, 10 years before they know and trust us. So how can we make that happen a little faster? Three day challenges. Really, really good for that because they're going to get to hear from you, experience what you have to offer, talk to you, participate with you, get feedback from you.

There's interaction that can happen in a three day event that you just really don't get to do any other way with people. I love workshops. I love webinars. These are like one-time events. Now we're spending three days with people. It gives them that many more touch points with us, so that know trust factor goes through the roof. You'll have people who on day one don't know you at all and on day three are telling all their friends about you. Or on day three they're inviting friends. Hey, you can still sign up for the challenge I've been doing this week. This health coach is so amazing. They're going to become your big raving fans again because within a challenge, you're sending an email, they get an email from you each day. That's like the baseline. From there you can be doing things like live video. You don't have to, but you might.

That's another way for people to interact with you. You might be providing some sort of prerecorded video. That's another way for people to hear your voice look at your face. You just get to know people. I can't tell you how many coaches tell me they feel like they know me because they've heard my voice so much. Even just listening to this podcast or we run events like this all the time and health coaches are like, oh my gosh, Michelle, I feel like I know you. Your voice is in my head. That really helps build that know, like and trust factor. You're going to have some type of online forum, some type of place where you can interact during your three days, and that's a huge way for people to go, oh, this person's paying attention to me. I left a comment. They wrote back, this is a real person.

It's not just a face on the internet. So whether you're bringing in your family and your friends to get them more involved with what you do with your work or you're working with perfect strangers, a three day challenge is the best way I know to get people feeling like they really know you, they would say yes, please. I'd love to work with you because I feel like I can trust you because I like everything you've said so far. You're making me nod my head. You change in my life just in these three days. Oh my god. Can you imagine what we could do if we work together for three months or however long your coaching program is? Okay, now tell me in the chat if you're here with me live, how are you currently building your know, like and trust factor with your audience? Are you sending emails regularly to a mailing list?

Are you maybe posting regularly to social media? I mean, none of these things are you showing up and doing talks in your local community. There's so many ways to help people get to know you and you and build a relationship, but none does it faster than a three day challenge. So that's why I really like that one. Okay, so that's obviously huge when we're signing, we're promoting our one-on-one coaching program. Next. I didn't make this up and I don't even know who to give credit to for this. I just think it is a brilliant way of describing marketing. So it goes something like this, I'm going to mess it up. Oh my God, I'm just saying this off the top of my head right now, but it's such a good lesson, okay? Let's say that you're not a health coach and actually very different for a living.

You sell hot dogs. That's what the example is. How can you make the most money selling hot dogs? How can you sell the most hot dogs? How can you have the highest pricing? What would you have to do in order to be the best hot dog salesperson ever? Imagine that you had one of those carts and you're cooking up dogs so you can have better hot dogs. I know in this group we all would want our hot dogs to be organic and grass fed and we'd want to actually know what was in the hot dog. So maybe that's one thing you could do. You could sell a better quality product. Yeah, that's one way you could go about it. What else could you do? You could have better sign signage, hot dogs, get 'em here. Your sign's bigger, your sign's better. You're going to get more customers.

There's lots of ways that you could do better in your hot dog business, and I swear this is coming back around to health coaching any minute now, but the very best way to sell hot dogs is to park your hot dog cart outside Yankee Stadium when the game just got out or parking it outside somewhere where people are there in great quantity and they are hungry. That's the main thing. You want to sell hot dogs at 6:00 PM You want to sell hot dogs at noon. You want to be selling your hot dogs when and where people are hungry and that's how you're going to do the best in your hot dog business. Okay, so now how does this relate to health coaching? Well, when someone is hungry for health coaching, it's when they are really, really aware of and thinking about whatever health problem they have.

I'm sure people like this, they have 99 health problems, but they're not thinking about any of them or they're thinking about the smallest, what we would consider the silliest one. But they have their gut is a wreck. They've got all kinds of hormone imbalances. They've got toxicity from every single thing in their kitchen and everything they're eating and the air freshener hanging in their car, but they're not thinking about that. They're not hungry for help with that. We want to promote our services to people who are hungry for a solution to their problem, and that is another reason why a three-day challenge can be so effective because if done, you're not only having fun with people for three days, giving 'em some health tips. That's what you want to kind of avoid in these things. By the way, just giving out tips, what you really want to do, it's very strategic, is you want to help someone fully recognize their problem, come face to face with the issue that they're having.

Think about that problem. Think about how much better their life would be if they didn't have that problem anymore. They have, I don't know what they have. They have low energy, they have eczema, they have Lyme disease, they can't sleep at night. You want them to confront their problem and become incredibly hungry for a solution, which at the end of your three day challenge, you'll be able to offer a way for them to work with you. So this is how we get someone to say yes, we build up the no trust factor and then you have to create an environment. It's almost like where they can see and hear and feel their problem more fully than they normally would. Not that we want them to suffer. I'm not saying we want their symptoms to get worse, we just want to amplify and make it very present for them.

Like, oh yeah, I have been suffering my life could be so much better if I solved this issue because what do people normally do? They just took it under the rug and they keep living their life. They're exhausted. They just drink another cup of coffee, they can't sleep. They pop an Ambien. People are masters of ignoring their big problems. They're masters of making sure that they just numb out instead of looking for a solution. So in our three day challenge, we want to help them see that there is a solution and they can be feeling so much better so that their stomach is basically growling for that solution. And then when you offer it to them, it's like a no brainer. They're like, oh yeah, obviously I need this right now. Does that resonate? I know, I know we don't like hot dogs very much in this crowd, but does that resonate?

You're always going to do bestselling something to people that want it to people who know they need it, not to people who you think need it. You see someone walking down the street and you're like, oh, they could totally use my health coaching program. That means nothing. They have to realize it. They have to realize it first and then the last thing that needs to come into play, the thing that really pushes someone from health coaching. That's interesting. Maybe I'll do that sometime. Maybe I'll do that next month. Maybe I'll think about it later. We love to do it later. Just human nature. We love to procrastinate. We love to say I'll sleep on that. How many times have you been sitting there in a consultation and you offer your program and someone goes, I'd like to do this. I'd like, could I do this later?

It's like the perennial problem of people just wanting to procrastinate, dealing with their health issues. So the way to get someone to help someone make the decision that ultimately is going to serve them best, just a little push really helps in sales of all kinds. But I find very much so in this coaching space where people don't necessarily think I need this right now, is to provide some level of urgency and scarcity. And we talk about this a lot inside my fast track program. It is just the underpinning of so many different sales tactics and we never want to do it in an icky used car salesman kind of way. However, if you're, this is where that Black Friday thing actually is. It works because you're saying you can get this thing that you want. You can get this solution, you can get this result that you need and you can get it with this huge bonus or at this great price, or there's an incentive.
We have to do it within this time period. And so that's really helpful about running live date-based events, like a three day challenge because they got to sign up for it by a certain day. There's just this very mild pressure to do it. It's like what's the term for that when it's a healthy amount of stress? It's called eustress, right? EU stress. So it's not so little stress that we're just complacent and lazy and it's not so much stress that we're burning out, but just in the middle of that bell curve, that eustress that says, yeah, I'm going to be proactive. I'm going to do the thing. We get people to sign up for this three day challenge. Now they're there, they're with us, and then we say, Hey, you can sign up for my program. I can help you get the result that you're looking for.

I can help you resolve these issues that you've been dealing with, and we give them an incentive to do it now versus later, the inevitable later. We don't want them to do it later. If you're here with me live and I know a bunch of you are, tell me in the chat. If you just say me, if you've ever had someone say to you, I'd like to do that later, can I sign up later? Right? It's like it's this bucket of cold water on you after you're just so excited to work with someone. It's the right thing for them, and then they just resort to that procrastination. I think we've all been there. So I'm going to reiterate these key factors. I don't care. There's probably so many ways that you can combine them and so many ways that you can make them happen, but a three day challenge covers them all.

So first, it's the know, like, and trust factor. We can have so much fun with people over three days that they just want to spend more time with you win. It's a win for them. It's a win for you. Next, we want to help amplify and help them better see here and feel their problem so that we are offering something to them while they are hungry for it, while they are thinking about it before they just go back to their regular life and they just tuck it away again and pretend it doesn't exist. And then lastly, we want to provide some type of urgency or scarcity, which I didn't say as much about. Urgency is like buy this date or before this thing happens, you have to get it done by this time. There's a reason to move. Now, scarcity is when there's only a few spots available.

And that's always true with one-on-one coaching. Even if you have no clients right now, there is a maximum number of one-on-one clients that you can work with at any one time. I mean, I don't know about you guys, but I always maxed out at like 10, right? It's a lot of energy working with one-on-one clients. If you have another job, if you have other commitments. I know some coaches are like, I can only work with one client at a time right now based on the other things going on in my life. Use that to your advantage. You're going to let people know that there is exactly one space available that's scarcity, and that makes somebody go, Ooh, maybe I should do the thing instead of waiting on the thing. If there's only one spot, I need that. Right? And this is all done in service of helping people get the support that they so desperately need, do the things for the help, their help that they so desperately need and want to do, but yet it's always just so convenient for them not to.

Yeah. So I'm going to walk you through this process. I'm going to walk you through a three day event that does exactly this, and we are going to have some fun together and we are going to know each other better by the end of this event. In fact, I already today have participants posting in our Facebook group a photo of themselves and a little introduction so we can get to know everybody. It's so important. It's so good for people to connect and not feel like they're in it alone. And I'm going to walk you through better understanding how and why to run your own three day challenge and how to put all the pieces into place. So this is going to be a very, very worthwhile event for you for all the health coaches. Once again, you can sign up for free. It's at healthcoachpower.com/build, and I can't wait to see you there. I think we're going to have a very, very good time together. So put it on your calendar October 22nd through the 24th. Remember, even if you can't make those days sign up. Anyway, I'll give you all the materials so that you can watch 'em on your own time. And I will see you there. No podcast episode next week because guess what I'm going to be doing? I'm going to be running this event for you guys. So I won't be here on podcast, but I will be very much present with you inside our Facebook group, especially for everyone who has signed up. All right, you guys, I'll see you there. Looking forward to it. Have a great week.