#330: Want More Clients? Stand Out and Be Seen as a Leader

Hello there, health coaches. I'm thrilled to be here with you and kind of getting back into the swing of things after taking a trip to Iceland last week, think back to maybe to when you were a kid or a young adult. Do you remember anybody going to Iceland like ever? I don't remember anybody ever talking about Iceland when I was a kid. If you're here live with me. If you're watching in the Facebook group later, just tell me in the chat, when was the first time that you ever heard anybody talk about going to Iceland? And I swear this has to do with health coaching. It's going to come back around, but just dig in your memory for the first time you heard of anybody telling you how they were going to go see the Northern Lights, they were going to go check out the glaciers.

Maybe if you're in Europe, I know we have health coaches all over the place. Maybe we even have health coaches from Iceland and this community. So maybe for you guys it'll be different, but for me, I felt like it was only in the last 10 years or so that people started talking about their Icelandic adventures. And you guys, it really was cool. I mean, we hiked and we snowmobile through these amazing glaciers. We rode horses. We saw a ton of gorgeous waterfalls. We spent time on the black sand beaches and learned about volcanoes and ate the most delicious butter I have ever tasted in my life. I highly recommend it. Also, the lamb and the fish all local, but I digress the whole time. I was wondering why had no one talked about Iceland until fairly recently. So I finally asked our tour guide. It was like the last day we were there, and I was like, Hey, what's up with that?

I thought maybe it had something to do with their travel policies. Maybe something had changed politically. I don't know. And he said that Iceland had really opened up to tourism in 2010. So 15 years ago. I thought it was 10 years ago, but I was close. You want to know the reason why that happened in 2010? Does anyone know? No. It's because of this big volcano. There was this big eruption in 2010. One of the many volcanoes on the island started erupting and it created this giant cloud in the sky, and that caused a big problem for air travel to and from Europe. For weeks, millions of travelers apparently were affected because the planes couldn't fly. Imagine that. So this made the news worldwide. No one ever talked about Iceland before, but suddenly it was this big deal because of all the travel issues. So that put Iceland on the map, and suddenly it was on the news and they were reporting about the volcano.

And for the first time, people all over the world were hearing about Iceland as this wondrous place where there were apparently volcanoes and glaciers and waterfalls, and it was all over the news. It was getting all this visibility, this very sleepy, extremely secluded country was now on center stage. And with that tourism started to boom. I found out that the whole country has 300,000 people and now they get 3 million visitors a year because of a volcano. I'm sharing all this with you because in many ways it strikes me health coaches we're like, Iceland, we've got great stuff going on. I know you do. We got lots to share, but no one knows about us. Just like Iceland before the volcano, it was just as beautiful and rich and amazing, but no one was going there. No one was paying any attention because they hadn't heard about it, and therefore no one was interested.
No one was spending any money there. Sound like your business at all. I know, right? So today I want to talk about how to stand out, how to have your own volcano, so to speak. You want to capture attention on a larger scale and become seen as a leader, as someone that people want to pay attention to, someone that people want to know more about and spend money and time with. In short, how to become your own version of Iceland? Let's do it because we want people coming to you, right, asking to become a client. And that's not always happening, is it? Right? So does this sound good? You want to be Iceland? Just say yes in the comments if you're here live, if you're like, yeah, this sounds like a good plan, Michelle. I need to know how to make my own volcano erupt and we're going to get into it.

But first, I want to talk about a big mistake that health coaches make when it comes to all of this. We think that in order for us to have more success getting clients or get noticed that we need more certifications, we need more letters after our name that's going to do it, or we need more bells and whistles in our coaching practice. But I want to remind you, Iceland did not need any more natural wonders anything beyond what it already had, and neither do you have everything you need. You are already amazing. And I can say that because I have personally met so many health coaches in the past 16 years. This is not just anecdotal or what I kind of surmise from the people who are in our Facebook group. I literally know health coaches are amazing human beings. It's about putting yourself in front of new eyes for the world to see in a new way.

That's it. That's what we can learn from my trip to Iceland. So today we'll cover why being seen as a leader matters. What's holding you back and how to position yourself as an expert without feeling fake or pushy. And inside this marches, I just announced this, marches free Get More Clients bootcamp. I'm going to walk you through the exact steps to grow your authority and attract clients worldwide. I only do this once a year. It's my most popular training. So I want you to go register for free right now at healthcoachpower.com/getmoreclients. And I'm just going to drop the link over here in our Facebook group. Again, that's healthcoachpower.com/getmoreclients. And now I'm seeing all the comments from you guys as we've been going along. For some reason, they just showed up on my side. That's weird, but Shannon says, yes, maybe a decade ago.
First heard about Iceland and Ellen says her friend just went in September and she was shocked. Lisa says, I have several friends and family I know who have been going to Iceland started in the last five years, so actually 15 years. Isn't that crazy? But still, we all know it's been fairly recent. Ellen says that she needs a volcanic eruption. Yes, we could all use this kind of PR in our business, and Shannon said she just registered for Get More Clients. Alright, good. Now we're all on the same page. I'm glad to know that I wasn't the only one who was like, huh, where did Iceland come from? I also learned that the Icelandic language, by the way, is exactly the same as what the Viking spoke. It didn't evolve. They're just so secluded. It's just an interesting, interesting place. Anyway, we're going to get you guys signed up for bootcamp.

We're going to talk more about you getting this kind of visibility. But first, even for today, have you noticed that your friends and family, and even sometimes maybe someone at the gym, someone you see pretty often, they start to ask questions when they find out that you're really into health, who's had this experience where you kind of get people picking your brain. They're going to ask you what brands you buy, should they go vegan? They want to know how many days a week you work out or which yoga classes you recommend, right? We're always getting that brain picking stuff and sometimes it gets annoying, but what I want to remind you is that they're doing this because they already see you at least a little bit as an expert. So if you're like, yeah, Michelle, I want to be seen as an expert, but why me?

I'm an imposter, blah, blah, blah. Listen, you are not starting from scratch here just by being you, the people who know you are very likely, at least some of them are starting to think of you as a leader. And that's why we get our brains picked every time we turn around. I know it's always like I want people to pay me and hire me. I don't want them to pick my brain at the grocery store, but the point is that they're asking you questions for a reason. So I don't want you to get stuck on am I enough or why would anyone want to pay attention to me? Because we already know that to some degree they are. It might just be a few people right now, but it's a start. I remember when I left my career in advertising, I felt like, whoa, I did not go to college for health.

I only had this one measly Health Coach certification. And I say that tongue in cheek because really that's all I needed for this career that is now 16 years and ongoing. I didn't feel like an expert at all at the time, but this was true for me. I'm sure it's true for you. You're like one or two steps ahead of other people. You might not be the foremost expert in nutrition, but you're just one or two steps ahead of everybody. I remember that I knew, I knew what kale was, and back in 2009, nobody really knew what kale was and they certainly didn't know how to cook it, and they certainly didn't know how to cook it to make it taste any good. So there was that. I knew how to manage my health issues, some of my health issues naturally, other people didn't know that.

So even if you don't feel like you could be on a national stage, you don't feel like a leader in the health world. You really are to other people who are just a few steps behind and they're going, huh, wow. I wish I could do that. I wish I was like that. I wish I knew Something more about that. The trick here is getting enough people to start recognizing you. We got to get perfect strangers to notice your clarity, your confidence, your shining light. That's what they're going to pay for If you just read about Iceland, by the way, maybe we all learned about Iceland when we were in, I don't know, seventh grade social studies class. Maybe it was two pages out of the textbook. If you just saw that or if you saw a couple photos in a magazine, you probably wouldn't be like, yeah, I got to go there on my next vacation. Forget Costa Rica. Forget Hawaii. I'm going to Iceland in the middle of February, which is what I just did, which is hilarious, but that's not going to do it. Just seeing a few pages in a textbook. But when you see the massive eruption of lava and excitement and this feeling of danger, seeing all of that on the news, people were like, wow, that's powerful stuff.

So you're probably thinking, how can I get myself on the news like that? Any ideas of how you could get that kind of attention for yourself and your own business? You're like, how can a little old me capture attention worldwide? It's exciting, but it kind of feels impossible, right? Iceland probably felt that way too. They're like, we raise sheep. We're farmers. We have terrible weather. Why would anybody want to come here? They could talk themselves right down too, just like any of us can. Who am I? Nobody cares about me. This is a really easy pitfall of our coaches to find themselves in and what we're talking about Iceland here, but to bring it a little bit more into our industry, we're looking at other health and wellness personalities, influencers we're like, well, I can never be like that. I can never have that many followers.

I can never do that cool thing that person's doing, and we feel like we have to somehow mimic what they're doing if we're going to succeed. So I want to talk about this possible roadblock because it'll get you every time. Maybe you're thinking, well, mark Hyman just to throw a name out there, Mike, mark Hyman posts Instagram, I don't know, three, four or five times a day, I'm going to post to Instagram three times a day too. I'm going to be like Mark Hyman. And then it doesn't work. You just end up wasting a lot of time staring at Instagram. Or maybe you see someone and you're like, wow, they have this big online nutrition course. Look how they're talking about it all over the place. I'm going to do that too. So you do. You put something together, but nobody buys it, right? You waste many, many hours, lots of money.

You still have no clients. Anybody have an experience like that? So if you do have some influence right now, and you do, we already talked about that, but you don't have major reach. You're not going to be on CNN and you don't have 3 million social media followers. The trick, hear me on this. The trick is knowing what stage of business you're in and acting accordingly. And there are three stages I always talk about to any health coaching business. I'm going to mention them briefly today. I'm going to go into a lot more detail during our Get More Clients bootcamp this March because once you see what stage of business you're in, it becomes more clear what it's going to take to Uplevel to the next stage. So I can't recommend this bootcamp highly enough. I want to make sure you register for free. So once again, that's at healthcoachpower.com/getmore clients because I know you want to get more clients, and this way you're going to be able to take the steps that make the most sense for you wherever you are at, with however many followers or whatever kind of audience you have, whatever your strengths are in that bootcamp, we're going to create a custom plan for you to follow.

Here's an example. Here's a real life example of what I'm talking about, about trying to jump too far too fast, trying to do what the big dogs are doing, and it's just totally ineffective if you're not quite there yet. This is an example from my own business. God, sometimes it is just embarrassing. I tell you guys all these stories, you must think, how did she ever turn this into a real business? Because there were so many times it was just silliness. So here it goes. In my first year as a health coach, I met a woman who did pr and I was only making a small amount of money at the time. I just had a couple clients making a few pennies here and there, but I decided I was kind of lost. Do you know that feeling? I decided I was going to invest $2,000 for this woman to get me some publicity.

I was going to cross my fingers like this and hope that she could work some magic because I knew I had to get in front of new eyes, and that seemed logical. Maybe I needed to that hire someone to do that kind of legwork for me. So I was going to let her do it, and she did, and I got some minor publicity, little bits and pieces here and there, but I did end up on the local news channel in my area for a short morning segment. Again, first year as a health coach, I was like 28 years old. I was terrified, and I was going to be on the local news, pretty cool. Some people even saw me there. I was on the air, I was making a smoothie.
So that was kind of neat. But I didn't stand out. I was just another so-called health expert doing a morning segment on their show, and it was pretty darn generic. They asked me what I wanted to do. I was like, I don't know. I guess I could make a smoothie. I had no strategy going into it, and I had no system in place to turn that publicity into clients. I was thinking, oh, if I get on tv, that'll put me in the big times. And so I did. Business did not benefit at all. I was thinking it would kind of be like if Iceland got itself on the news with that volcano, and then people wanted to travel there, but then Iceland was like, oh, we don't have an airport. They do have an airport. But let's say they would be like, oh, we got all this publicity, but we can't take advantage of it, or we don't have any hotels.

That was me. So that was an example of trying to mimic what I thought and needed to do on this bigger scale, what big influencers might be doing. But I just didn't have a strategy in place to support it. I was too new. It wasn't that a right next step for me. So when you're in that first early stage of business and who thinks they're there right now, you can just say, I'm a side hustler because that's what I call it. We're in that first stage. You're kind of hustling on the side to get this thing going. Yes, of course you want to position yourself as an expert, but I want you to think, and I rarely say this, but I want you to think a little bit smaller, doable. I want you to work your way up because like I said, that TV appearance led to zilch in terms of clients.

It really didn't do anything for me. But when I contrast that to that first year or two of business, I was doing a lot of workshops. Every time I held a workshop, I got a client. I built my mailing list because at a workshop, I didn't need any fancy systems in place. I was able to talk directly to the people in the room. So I was able to make a strong one-to-one connection. You can't do that on tv. You can't do that on social media. So that is how I was able to stand out when it was just little old me, I was able to actually have those one-to-one conversations. Boom. Now they know who you are. People were like, Michelle. I know. Her workshops actually led to me being seen as a leader little by little, one room of participants at a time. It always led to clients.

Now, as my business grew, of course, and I had a true client generation engine in place, that's what I call, that's like the next stage of business. That's what I call the go-getter stage. Get in some of the pieces in place. Now, I could do more at that point. I could go after bigger opportunities. They made more sense for my business, and I was able to find clients in lots of different ways. But my point is, yes, you're already seen as an expert, at least a little tiny bit, at least to some people. And yes, you can gain the visibility you need, but think about doing it a little bit and a little bit and a little bit at a time. What do they say? Eating an elephant? How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. There's going to be no overnight successes here.

And if you're constantly trying to grow too fast too soon, your expectations aren't going to match reality, and you're going to feel frustrated and you're going to give up and you're going to say, this whole health coaching thing doesn't work. It's exactly like our clients. If you have a client who thinks that they should, let's just say, lose 10 pounds right away, they're like, well, I'm going to hire you and you're going to be the expert and you're going to make this all happen for me. And then they don't lose 10 pounds in that first week. They're like, oh, this didn't work. This is stupid. They need patience. They need a system where they're making incremental change over time or else nothing's going to work for them. And the same is true for your business. You want to get a strong system in place for generating clients, become more and more seen as an expert over time.

And then there's this really important snowball effect that starts to happen. And your next best move, we're going to figure it out together during my Get More Clients Bootcamp this March. Remember, I got a free spot for you at healthcoachpower.com/getmoreclients during bootcamp. I'm going to give you lots of ways to build your credibility and expertise and get more and more eyes on you and your business. But for today, I'm going to leave you with one more real story from Iceland and also from my own business. The other thing that I learned about Iceland during my trip is that practically none of the people there, I met hardly anyone who was actually from Iceland, like the hotel staff, the restaurant staff or tour guides. Nobody was from Iceland, they said, most Icelanders, I think they're called Iceland. They're farmers. So they're off doing their thing.
They're not catering to the tourists. So most of the tourism industry depends on Europeans. I met from countries like Germany and Romania and Poland, just to name a few. They come to Iceland to work for a few months, for a year. I think I met someone who had been there for three years, and they were going home soon, which means even when Iceland was getting all this publicity, and yes, they had an airport where travelers could fly in. So that was something. They didn't have an entire infrastructure in place for tourists, but they kind of figured it out, and it's grown over time, and the same will be true for you. So just like when I started writing for some online publications, I think this was in my first or second year of being a health coach, I became a contributing health writer for a couple websites, and it was an excellent way for me to become seen as a leader.

It was like a pretty big break. It wasn't national news sized big break, but it was a pretty big break. And they even told me that I could advertise my events to their audience, to their readers, amazing. But at the time, I didn't know how to collect email addresses If I wanted to offer a webinar or a workshop or something online, I didn't really know how to do that. I didn't have the technology, the know-how. I could not figure it out. So you know what I did in my articles? I just asked people to email me, and I gave them a certain subject line if they wanted to sign up for whatever I had going on. Let's say I was doing my Sugar SmackDown workshop. I just had them email me with the subject line Sugar SmackDown, and I collected their email addresses that way.

Not ideal, but it worked. I just had to figure something out, kind of like Iceland importing their staff to handle all the tourists. You just kind of figure something out, and you will too little by little. So if you're listening to all this today and you're like, I don't quite feel ready. I'm not sure if I can do this, just go for that next step. Like that next rung up. It's the one that makes you feel a little bit uncomfortable, but you can figure it out and you're going to make it work. You're going to find a way. Don't go hiring a PR firm for thousands of thousands of dollars who's supposed to be working with businesses much larger than yours. That's going to be too much. But start noticing and creating opportunities all around you. I'm going to help you with that during bootcamp. So one more time, you can sign up for free. It's at healthcoachpower.com/get moreclients. And by the way, if you're interested, I'll be sharing some photos from Iceland to my Instagram account. I'm at healthcoachpower Community, and you can see for yourself some of the cool things I mentioned today and get inspired by this fascinating country and their success story. I'll see you guys next week. Take care.