The “Capsule Blog” Strategy: How To Get Health Coaching Clients with Blogging

Michelle Leotta:
Welcome to the Health Coach Power Community podcast. I'm Michelle Leotta, ex-corporate girl turned certified health coach with over 15 years of experience growing a successful online practice. I started out with no idea what I was getting into and learned a lot of lessons along the way that have given me the freedom to do the work I love and raise two boys as a single mom.

I created the Health Coach Power Community over a decade ago to make it easier for health coaches to build a career they love and make the world a better place

My health coaching practice started with a blog nearly 20 years ago. But should you start a blog as a way to find clients? My guest today says yes, with one big caveat. Jana, welcome back to the show.

Jana Osofsky:
Thank you. I'm so happy to be here again.

Michelle Leotta:
We've gotta just cut to the chase because I know everyone's thinking, "Why do we need to blog? Anybody could just ask ChatGPT a question." Content's all AI-generated anyway these days. Why is a blog a good idea for health coaches anymore?

Jana Osofsky:
Yeah. I definitely think my answer... I mean, I know my answer is yes, it's still a good idea. I mean, we can talk about AI, we can talk about thought leadership, we can talk about do people read blogs anymore?

Um, but the bottom line is that I have students who are writing blog posts and getting health coaching clients with them. And so yes, I do believe that a blog is very much well worth it for your business these days if you are, number one, writing things that are based on what your audience needs from you to feel ready to buy your health coaching offer, which I know sounds kinda obvious, but a lot of people don't write the things that people need to be ready to buy, and that's what you need to be writing.

And then I'd say the second thing is as long as you're doing your blog in a modern 2026 way, and you're not following, like, old blogger rules and getting caught up in that and letting it be a big time trap without ROI. If those things are in place and you have the right strategy, then yes, a blog can be amazing for a health coaching business, yes.

Michelle Leotta:
Well, I'm definitely interested to hear more about what you mean by what your potential client needs to hear. Should we start there or should we get into this... I know you have this whole idea of a capsule blog that we wanna talk about today.

Jana Osofsky:
Yes. Yeah. Well, I think a capsule blog, I think understanding that is really important first, and then it becomes more obvious why it's so important to be so much more intentional than we sometimes tend to be with topics.
So I think starting by talking about what the capsule blog is would be a really good idea.

Michelle Leotta:
All right, let, we've all heard of a capsule wardrobe, so I already love it. Tell us what this means

Jana Osofsky:
Yes, you already have an idea of what it means. If you know what a capsule wardrobe is, if you have one, if you love the concept, a capsule blog is the same thing.

It is a very intentionally small library of blog posts. The way I teach it and the way I do it in my own business as well is it's between 12 and 20 blog posts. And it's just like a capsule wardrobe. It's very versatile, and you're choosing things very intentionally, and you're making sure you're setting it up so it can do a lot of different things, and you can mix and match with it and that type of thing.

But it is 12 to 20 blog posts that cover the key things that your audience really needs to learn and hear from you and understand better or understand more deeply in order to feel ready and excited to buy your offer and sign up for your health coaching program or offer. So we choose our topics super intentionally.

And you and I have had this conversation a couple times before, and some of your audience may have heard me say this, but unfortunately, um, these days, and it's not always been this way, but these days, if you are really just creating content about things like recipes and quotes from people that you think are inspirational and top 10 books to read if you're trying to improve your XYZ aspect of your health or whatnot, those types of things are not what we consider capsule blog worthy.

And so that's kind of part of like the old way of doing things, and the new way is making sure the things you're writing about are the things people need from you to be ready to buy.

Michelle Leotta:
It almost makes too much sense, so I just wanna pause real quick for everyone who's listening and is like, "Oh, yeah. Wow, why didn't I think of that?

This makes so much sense." Uh, Jana and I are doing a free training just for listeners of my podcast on June 18th all about how to build a capsule blog and use it to sign health coaching clients on repeat, and you can register for free for that at HealthCoachPower.com/Blogging But for today, Jana, tell us how does this work?

We just like write a couple blog posts and then walk away, we're done?

Jana Osofsky:
Yeah. Well, we're gonna go deeper on it at the training. But yes, you ... No, you don't really walk away from it, I guess, right? You, you write your blog post. My program really divides it into three different steps. The first step or phase is really identifying exactly what those topics are going to be, what does your audience need?

And we wanna make sure you're writing things about the problems that your offer solves, the desires that you know your audience has that they really want help with, that your offer helps them get to, and really honing in on those things and being specific about them. And then also writing things that shift people's beliefs, because a lot of times there are things that people believe right now that we need to help them shift in order for them to understand that they are gonna get results with your program and that they can trust themselves too, and things like that, right?

So those are the types of things that we're identifying in phase one, what does your audience need? Because if you're going to use your blog library, which we do, in your marketing, we don't walk away from it after we build it. We share it regularly. We repurpose from it to create other types of content as needed for your business.

And that means that includes social posts if you're doing social media. It also can include emails, which I'm a big proponent of the idea that you have to have email marketing in your business to really be sustainable, so we really, you know, encourage that, right? And you use the blog posts in your sales process as well.

So once you build your library, you do use it regularly. You share it, you repurpose from it, you use it in your sales process. And so now as you start to think about it that way, and we're gonna talk about like how often you repurpose from it and all those nitty-gritty things in our training later on, um, in the month.

No, later on next month, right? Um, it's still May, Jana. But if you think about it that way, if you're gonna keep using it over and over again, it really needs to be honed in as far as like the actual topics, right? So phase one is figuring out what your topics are, what does your audience need to feel ready to buy?

Phase two is writing those blog posts, because you need to structure them in a certain way so that they're fun to read and they give value, but without like giving too much away and without overwhelming people. And also, how do you talk about your offer in a way that makes it sound exciting without being too salesy, things like that, right?

So how do you structure it? We figure out how to write those, and we write them. That's phase two, and then that means you've built your library, and then in phase three, you're repurposing, you're re-sharing at certain intervals on repeat, and you're using them in your sales process. So it can't be things that are just like white noise.

It has to be the specific topics that are gonna be high leverage for you. Just like if you were only gonna have 12 pieces in your capsule libra- I mean, sorry, capsule library, your capsule wardrobe in your closet, you would definitely not want, like, a bright yellow top and purple pants and y- one striped dress.

And you know, you, you'd wanna make sure you have things that are really versatile and, um, certainly things that add a little bit of color and punch, too, but, like, you need to, like, find that balance, right? So that's what we do really with The Capsule Blog. It's the same concept.

Michelle Leotta:
Well, I can see why this is so useful to health coaches because you're hitting on, like, all the things that coaches struggle with, like people finding them in the first place and being able to show credibility and legitimacy to your business.

Like, if you have this body of work to share, it really helps with that. And then, like you said, like, even during the sales process. So it sounds like just this one wardrobe, so to speak, starts helping coaches in lots of different areas of being successful.

Jana Osofsky:
Definitely. It's one of those things where the system that I teach, I really call it and consider it a blog-first marketing system.

So you start with a blog, but it ends up really touching a lot of other areas of your business because choosing the topics and writing them gives you a lot of clarity, a lot of confidence in yourself when you have a really good quality blog and people are complimenting it. And I have students who say they go back and they read their own blog post sometimes when they're feeling like they need a little bit of a confidence boost.

It becomes kind of a source of truth, you know, for your philosophies and your thought leadership, right? And of course, it's most importantly is it, it attracts clients and it converts clients for you.

Michelle Leotta:
We love this. I mean, we've talked about this capsule blog strategy before. I know that the coaches in my community love this.

How did you, like, invent this in the first place? It is, it's pretty unique.

Jana Osofsky:
Yeah, I, definitely. So I was a service provider in the beginning of my business for many years. I was not a health coach, but I almost Within the first year of being a service provider, I had a couple of health coach clients, and I ended up doing Pinterest marketing setups and blog strategy and blog writing for lots of health coaches.

So, um, I really got to know the field, if that makes sense. But back at the beginning of my business, I was doing a lot of done-for-you work, and I had a lot of done-for-you time blocked off on my calendar. Much like a coach who has clients would have a lot of time blocked off on their calendar for the actual coaching of clients and connecting in between sessions with clients, depending on how your offer's set up and that type of thing.

And so when I looked at my calendar, I realized, like, I really don't have a lot of time left over to do my own marketing. But at the same time, I needed to keep my pipeline full of new clients, and especially for me, because I, um, a lot of my work was project-based, so I would do the work, and then I would...it would be over, and I'd need another client to keep the income coming in. And so I really had to solve this problem for myself in the beginning, like how do you work with clients and have most of your schedule blocked off for work with clients but also have to, like, have this, like, second full-time job as a marketer?

Like, what? You know? Yeah. I'm like, "How is this gonna work?" Um, I also would like to have some free time. I'd like to exercise. I'd like to be a good friend and a good daughter and a good, you know, spouse and show up for my people and stuff. So how am I gonna balance all this? And I decided that I was gonna have a blog that would basically be a place where I could send people when they had questions, and it would be a place where people could learn about me even when I wasn't working.

So if they came to my website to learn about my offer for some reason, if they saw me post something in a group, or they were referred from a friend or from, like, a potential referral partner, like for some health coaches I know, like, they'll get referrals from physicians' offices or things like that. If anyone was landing on my website for reasons that I, I created that, I got them there, or other people got them there or whatever, they would be able to see all those key messages on my blog that all the things that they really needed to understand better about my offers, to see the value of my offers, and to understand the things they needed to to feel ready.

And I noticed once I started writing my blog and using it in all the ways that I just told you about a minute ago, repurposing it to different places, which I did a lot of, by the way And using it in my sales process, and re-sharing it and that type of thing, using it to grow my audience as well, I noticed that everything got easier.

Everything from my audience growth was better and faster, to when people got on sales calls with me, I would start hearing people saying like, "Oh, I already read a couple of your blogs. I'm ready. I just, I had like one question for you." Or, "When can we start?" Or something like that. Less convincing and more people showing up wanting to do this work.

So I knew my blog posts were high converting, 'cause I had written them based on what I knew people needed to feel ready to buy my offer, so I started repurposing them everywhere as well. Um, and I also noticed that when I started repurposing, that meant I was repeating my main messages more, which we've talked about a lot before as well.

And when you create more repetition in your marketing, that also is a big help in your marketing, 'cause it makes everything work better because people start to know you for your thing, and, um, your messages just land better when you're repeating the same main messages over and over again, instead of coming up with like brand-new things to say all the time and giving people whiplash, you know?

So that was a little all over the place, but that's how I discovered this and invented it. Back in the day, I didn't call it a capsule blog library, but now I realize that that's how to best explain it. That's the analogy that works to explain it to people.

Michelle Leotta:
You know, when you put it that way, it makes a lot of sense.

You repeat yourself over and over, you become known for something, and all the good brands, all the big brands do this. That's why they are known. And yet, why does it always feel like we have to come up with something different to say? It's a lot of stress.

Jana Osofsky:
Well, I think the reason that happens is because we, and I think health coaches sometimes are in a particularly, a situation that really kind of exacerbates this, I think we look to the influencer culture, and we see people who are influencers in our space, like health influencers, for example.

And we think that in order to stay relevant, we always have to be coming up with new things. But we do things differently. When you are working with clients, and you want to attract clients, it's a different ball game altogether, and it really is better to identify what problems you solve for who, what they believe now when you start to notice patterns, and what you need to help them understand in order for them to feel ready, those types of things.

And then repeat those messages, instead of trying to come up with just new things all the time like an influencer. You know, new smoothie recipes, new this, new that. So I think it comes from influencer culture myself.

Michelle Leotta:
1,000%. That is so dead on. So what do you say to someone who's like I don't want, I certainly don't wanna be an inf- influencer, but I don't wanna be a blogger.

Jana Osofsky:
Yeah, it's a similar concept, isn't it? Because when you're a blogger, and a- and again, health coaches, when they think about blogging, they often think about food blogs. And food blogs are still a thing, for sure, but that's not what we're trying to do as health coaches who want a blog that's gonna bring us clients and help convert those clients.

So you're, no, you're not a blogger. You are a coach with a blog, and I think that's really important. I've had some of my students write that on a sticky and stick that up on their wall because we're not gonna blog every week or every month for the rest of our lives. We're gonna write a capsule blog library of 12 to 20 posts, and then we're gonna stop and turn our attention to repeating those main messages in our marketing and in our sales process so that we can use them to get clients, right?

And there's other things that kinda come up in that arena as well, like we don't have to worry about all the fancy formatting that bloggers do. You know, certainly recipe bloggers are among the ones that, uh, you know, with their widgets and their recipes and they're this and they're that. None of that really matters.

You know, we don't have to worry about the, the tech is not hard when you have a blog like the kind that we need. All you really need is an easy-to-read blog, um, and basic tech, and you don't need a lot of images, a lot of, you know, bells and whistles. You just use your words to communicate the things that people need to feel ready for your offer, so here's some examples.

Michelle Leotta:
So helpful. It's just a total reframe, and even though I've heard you say it before, I love hearing you say it again. And for anyone who's hearing it for the first time, like, hit rewind, listen again, write it on the sticky note because we are inundated with, like, we look at those food blogs, and we think, "Oh, that's what I should be doing," and whew, no wonder it becomes overwhelming.

Jana Osofsky:
Right. And I don't... I mean, I don't know about you, but I tend to attract a lot of students to my program who are, um, around my age, and I'm 49. Um, and so a lot of ladies and gentlemen, but a lot of ladies especially, come into my program who are, you know, somewhere around the same age that I am, and so we are old enough to remember the fashion blogs and the food blogs and when blogging was, like, kind of, like, way before even social media was a thing.

So we still think of blogging in that old school way, but that's not really what this is. This is putting articles on your website that are showing people what they need and then using them in different ways in your messages, right?

Michelle Leotta:
You're exactly right. Mm-hmm. It was very different back then. It is. Yeah.

And I might be in the same age bracket. Yeah. You know, when I started off this episode, I said, "Why should we even bother blogging in a world where we can just ask ChatGPT for information? We don't need a blog post to tell us." And, you know, with all of the AI that's out there, are you recommending that coaches use it or don't use it, or how does that fit into the picture?

Jana Osofsky:
Yeah. Some of my students use it, and I show you how to do it in the context of the way I teach writing, and then some of my, um, students prefer not to use it for various reasons. And, um, you don't have to use it, uh, in order for this system to work. And the nice thing is that there are a few people who do choose not to use it, and it might be a little bit slower for them to write, but they only have to write 12 to 20 blogs.

It's not like we're saying you have to write a new blog, you know, of 3,000 words every single week for the rest of your life because you're not a blogger. You're a coach with a blog. And so that is a viable option, but, um, most of my students do come in and at least give the AI tools that I have inside the program a shot.

Um, and some of them find they really like them, and others decide, you know, "I'd rather just free write," and that's okay, too. But I teach a four-step writing process, and the first step is outlining, and we don't actually use AI to outline. We use our brains to outline. And to me, that's the key to all of it, is making sure that when you outline, what's really going on when you outline, and I have outlines in the program.

We'd write nine different types of content, and there are nine different types of outlines, and each outline prompts you through how to outline it. And really what you're doing is you're deciding of all the, you know, 1,000 things that I could say to this person about how to think about this problem that I'm writing this blog about that I know they have that I can help them solve, of all the thousand insights I could share with them, what am I going to share with them?

It's like choosing what you wanna say, right? And when you do that with your brain- Uh, your blog post is going to end up being more unique than something you would just write by jumping into ChatGPT and being like, "Hey, write me a blog post about, like, how to lose belly fat," or something bum-rolling- Oh, gosh out like that.

Michelle Leotta:
Please don't do that.

Jana Osofsky:
Right. Please don't do that. So it's like you start with your own ideas and thoughts, and if you're not sure how to find those, that's okay because, like, my outlines are literally designed to, like, prompt you and excavate them from you as you're going. And that's step one, and then step two is drafting, where we take your outline, and we put it in the GPT that I've created, if you want to.

Again, you could free write if you prefer. But you can put it in the GPT. It'll generate your first draft for you. But then there's still two more steps that we're gonna be using to get that blog ready to publish. So we are using it, but we're not, like, relying on it for our ideas. Um, and that's really important these days because the last thing you wanna do is have content on your blog or anywhere that is.. just sounds like everybody else. You know, you do need to have something that differentiates you, um, and really shows, you know, your particular approaches and things like that.

Michelle Leotta:
Well, that kind of solves the problem. Uh, I'm thinking so many health coaches are like, "I'm not a good writer. I can't..." We have so many I can't becauses.

Jana Osofsky:
It's easy to have that.

Michelle Leotta:
Yeah, anything. I can't do a workshop because I just got... I have to get my hair done, you know, before I can do that. I can't do a blog 'cause I'm not a good writer. But it sounds like you really have a system in place to help someone even generate the ideas in the first place.

Jana Osofsky:
Yes, definitely. I believe strongly that you don't have to be a good writer to have a solid blog that sells your services. I have some students in the program who really feel like, "I love writing, but it's not converting." And, you know, that's one problem that we can definitely solve inside the program. And then the other folks are folks who are like, "Yeah, I just don't think I'm a writer," and that's okay because Really, if you're open to using the AI tools, um, you don't even really have to write.

You just have to put down your ideas, and they don't even have to be, like, cohesive. They just have to be enough so that the robots understand what it is that you're trying to say, and the robots will help us make it sentences and paragraphs.

Michelle Leotta:
The robots. The robots. Yeah.

Jana Osofsky:
They're still helpful sometimes. They can be, as long as, you know, you don't let them take over.

Michelle Leotta:
Yeah. That'll be, like, the next iteration of this conversation, but we'll get there when we get there, you know? Right.

Jana Osofsky:
Yeah.

Michelle Leotta:
So has anyone ever said, like, uh, "Well, this is lazy"? Like.

Jana Osofsky:
Yeah.

Michelle Leotta:
Why are we gonna do 12? Like, this is-

Jana Osofsky:
Yes ...

Michelle Leotta:
This is silliness.

Jana Osofsky:
Yes, and I love it. I love it. I did. I had someone reply back to one of my emails in a launch a year ago maybe or so, and they said, "This sounds like it's lazy blogging, and I love it." And I was like, "I do, too." And so I decided to, uh, lean into that. So yes, I believe, and actually I think I have an email that goes out to sell this program that says, like, you can blog in a lazy way and still get clients.

Because it does come back to that whole idea that you're not a blogger. There are certain things that people, without the right strategy, think that they should be spending a lot of time on and energy on that just don't really... that they're not important when you're writing a blog to get clients. And so you can skip a lot of, like, things that you might think are steps you need to take.

And then, yes, I obviously have created tools. When you were saying a second ago, Michelle, that, like, there's so many reasons why we say we can't do something, I'm like, I just realized, I was like, "I think that you and I both have the same job. We basically just have to come up with ways to help people, like, do it anyway." Yeah.

Michelle Leotta:
That's pretty much the whole thing. That's the whole gig right there.

Jana Osofsky:
That's the whole gig. That's our whole gig. And so, yeah, so, you know, I've obviously built things into, into my program, as I know you have into yours, to help people make things easier, even if you wanna do it the lazy way. So yeah.

Michelle Leotta:
Well, and also, like, y- what you were talking about earlier, it's not like because we're lazy or because we're not gonna write more or whatever, it's because we are literally not... Like, this isn't the whole job. This is a small piece of the job over here to get more clients, but the work is actually working with the clients.

Jana Osofsky:
Absolutely. And so if you can do your blog or your marketing the lazy way, which like you said, is really just the efficient way, it's not the lazy way truly, it's efficient, then it frees you up to have more not only time, but, like, mental, you know, capacity and emotional capacity to really serve your clients in the deep way that you want to.

Michelle Leotta:
Oh, this is fantastic. I want you guys all to remember that Jana and I are doing a free training just for listeners of my podcast. It's on June 18th, that's 2026, all about how to build a capsule blog and use it to sign health coaching clients on repeat. You can register for free. I hope you'll join us. It's at HealthCoachPower.com/Blogging. Jana, thanks so much for being here.

Jana Osofsky:
Thank you for having me.