How Your Why Applies to Attracting Clients in Your Coaching Business
As a coach, it's highly likely that you feel a sense of meaning or purpose in your work and you have a heart for people. I also feel comfortable enough to divine that you likely felt an innate draw towards becoming a coach so that you could help your dream clients to be their best version of themselves.
I utilize Oracle cards to help guide me in my personal life and in my design business. Recently I was looking for guidance in where my focus should be on my business development day. The card I pulled from the Wisdom of the Oracle deck by Colette Baron-Reid was number 31 “Why?” This particular message moved me, “Knowing your why is the key to fulfillment. When you are clear about it, your intention will then be a magnet for miracles.” Baron-Reid writes, “Knowing the motives behind your career and creative ventures is the ticket to your greatest success.”
But how does your Why apply to your business, your brand, attracting coaching clients, and even within your approaches to coaching your clients? Purpose attracts, motivates, and retains your ideal clients. People are looking for a worthy purpose or vision they can believe in, especially in searching for coaches. Your Why builds trust. It creates and offers a way to relate to your ideal clients. Your purpose helps establish your competitive advantage. That's why it's essential to have your Why visible throughout your brand: the visuals, the messaging, the ways you interact.
3 Steps to Uncover Your Why & Increase Client Attraction
I'm a fan of Simon Sinek. His "Start with Why" Ted Talk inspired me to get introspective and discover and define my purpose. It motivated me to look at my life and career, to shake things up, and make moves toward creating a life worth getting out of bed for.
It is one of life's greatest joys to wake up in the morning
Every morning
with a clear sense of why the day matters
Why every day matters.
This is what it means to find your Why.
In case you haven't seen it before, here's that powerful message.
1) Questions to Surface Your Why
Discovering your why may initially seem to be a bit of a daunting task. In his book, "Find Your Why", Simon provides the following questions to dive deep and help reveal a theme. I recommend opening up a Google Doc and writing—it makes the theme identification process much simpler.
- Who in your life has helped make you the person you are today? Think of a specific time when they embodied what you admire most about them. How did hearing their words or watching their actions make you feel?
- Think of a day at work when you might have said to yourself, "I would have done that for free." What happened that day to make you say that?
- Think of your worst day at work—the kind of day you hope never to go through again. What happened?
- What is the earliest, specific, happy childhood memory that comes to your mind?
- At school, what was an experience you loved?
- What has been a pivotal moment in your life, one when you realized nothing would ever the same.
- What happened that changed the way you think about the world and your role in it?
- What was a time when you gave of yourself to help someone else, after which you felt unbelievably good—like you had done something that mattered?
- What have you accomplished that you're really proud of? (Be sure to make a mental note of who else was involved. Ex: who helped you, who cheered you on, who was waiting for you at the finish line?)
2) Identify Your Themes
Now it's time to identify recurring ideas, words, phrases, and feelings that float to the surface from your answers. Highlight one or two of them that inspire you—that jump off the page at you and resonate with you most. These words/themes are likely the most motivational words/phrases to use in your Why Statement.
3) Structure Your Why
The next step is to structure your Why Statement:
To [insert contribution] so that [insert impact].
Here are a couple of examples:
- "To leave a positive impact on people's lives so that they can realize their true potential."
- "To strive to help people so that they can be the best version of themselves."
Keep it simple, short, and easy to understand without further explanation. Note: It's perfectly OK to revisit and tweak this statement. Just as you are a work in progress, so is the statement.
My own Why has evolved over time:
- To empower businesses with soul to come to life and raise the vibe with purposeful design.
Apply Your Why to Your Life Coach Brand Touchpoints
Your Why can be a very powerful statement that can help guide every interaction you and your coaching business have with your clients. This includes everything from your visuals and your brand messaging at every touch point including your website, social media, email marketing, and sales pages and funnels. Your purpose impacts how attractive you are to your ideal clients from the moment they find you to after they engage with you and your services.
So tell me, what is your higher purpose in life? And how will you apply your Why to your coaching business?
