How to Get Your First Health Coaching Client

Health coaching can be a fun, rewarding, and lucrative career. If you love health and wellness, have been through your own battles, and love working with others, it could be a great career move for you. 

Becoming a certified health coach isn’t difficult if you’re motivated. The first real challenge many new coaches face is landing that first client. Once you have a few clients, and they have good experiences, more clients will come to you. It is essential that you put time, effort, and preparation into finding and working with your first clients to build a successful and long-lasting coaching business. 

Prepare Your Health Coaching Business Marketing Strategy

There are a couple of strategies trainers and coaches can use to get new clients: you can go far and wide, using marketing and advertising to reach as many people as possible, or you can be more focused and thoughtful. 

The latter is a better strategy for a small business owner. Be thoughtful about how you put your time and money into marketing, and you’ll get a better return. Plan and lay the groundwork rather than simply blanketing your entire community and online social media platforms with marketing materials. 

Define Your Ideal Client

This is the very first important step in getting clients for your business. You need to know who you’re selling services to so that you can target them. By defining your target audience, someone you think would hire you, you can eliminate certain groups and avoid wasting resources. 

Consider specifics, like gender, income, geographic location, and health problems. Who needs your services and could benefit from your expertise? What problems can you solve for them? Put yourself in their shoes to understand what they want to hear from you in order to take action and hire you as their coach. 

Prepare Your Story and Pitch

As you start to hear from potential clients, you should be prepared to reel them in. This means having a clear story to tell about yourself and your brand. A personal story about your own journey with health and wellness is a powerful way to connect with clients. 

Condense your story into a quick pitch you can use when meeting people in the gym or at a networking experience. Being able to communicate your message quickly and clearly is essential to landing new clients. Include what it is that makes you stand out from the crowd of other health coaches. 

Get Comfortable Selling Yourself

You must be able to demonstrate the value you can provide a potential client in order to land them. Most people are uncomfortable talking themselves up, but it’s a vital skill in business. Outline what you have to offer clients, how they will benefit from your services, and why you’re qualified to work with them. Pay special attention to what makes you different from other coaches in a sometimes crowded industry. 

You’ll also need to start thinking about what to charge clients. Here’s a helpful guide for setting rates as a health coach. 

Tips for How to Get Your First Health Coach Client

After laying the groundwork for selling your services, you’re ready to actively win over new clients. There are many different ways to do this. Here are some ideas and tips to get you started: 

Leverage Social Media

This is a no-brainer because it’s how so many people interact with the world today. It’s free too, although you can boost your reach with paid advertising. Build a presence on all the big social media platforms, keeping your brand consistent across all of them. 

Social media can be a great marketing tool, but only if you keep up with it. Post valuable, interesting content regularly; interact with your followers; encourage engagement with questions; follow influencers in your industry. 

Create a Website

Again, this one is a no-brainer in this day and age, but a successful website requires careful attention. It should be simple, clear, and easy to use. It should match your brand and target your specific audience and ideal client. 

It can take some time to rank in search engine pages, but smart strategies will get you there. Use your health coaching website to post blogs and videos and link to it from your social media sites to get more traffic. 

Build an Email List

An email list is a great way to stay in contact with current and previous clients and also to reach potential clients. Your website and social media sites should offer an opt-in for an informational newsletter for signing up for the email list. Create a newsletter clients will find valuable with health information, tips, local events, and more. 

Partner with Local Businesses

Local small businesses can be great places to market to potential clients. With your ideal new client in mind, select specific businesses and ask to leave fliers for your services. Some good ideas include local gyms, spas, doctor offices, chiropractic offices, and natural food stores or healthy restaurants. 

In addition to flyering, you can partner with these businesses to offer educational events, seminars, free sessions, and networking opportunities. If you offer different services but have the same types of clients, work together to benefit both businesses.

Offer Workshops

New clients might hesitate to commit to a package of coaching sessions. But, if you offer a one-time workshop for a small fee (or for free), you’ll draw more people in and have an opportunity to sell your services. 

This is a great chance to partner with local businesses. Offer a free seminar or low-cost workshop to their customers or clients. For instance, you could offer a coaching session on healthy eating with in-season produce at a health food store. Be prepared with fliers, business cards, and your sales pitch to convert attendees into clients. 

Here are some additional tips from personal trainers for getting new clients. 

Who Are Your First Health Coaching Clients? 

Your first coaching client could come literally from anywhere, but there are a few places you might want to look first. Narrow the field down to people most likely to hire you and begin there. Here are some ideas: 

1. Friends and Family. The people closest to you are likely to be supportive of your new business. Consider offering a few free or heavily discounted sessions to get started. You will have a chance to practice and get them to spread the word, and they will benefit from your services. It’s a win-win. 

2. Gym Buddies. Friends at the gym might not be as invested as your family or close friends, but they know you and your dedication. Find out if they’re interested in working with a health coach or if they know someone who is. 

3. Fitness Class Acquaintances. If you take yoga, spin, or other group fitness classes, you probably know some of the regular attendees. They could also be good sources for first clients interested in improving their health. 

4. Your Coworkers. If you have a day job and are beginning health coaching on the side, look to your current coworkers. You probably know who among them would be open to considering coaching sessions.

5. Personal Training Clients. Already a personal trainer or other fitness professional? Some of your current clients may benefit from your services as a health and wellness coach. 

As a beginner health coach, you have a lot of knowledge to share and a desire to help people. To do so, you need actual clients. Do the planning and leg work to bring them in, and before long, word of mouth will take over and you’ll have a thriving small business. 

Earning Your Health Coach Certification

The real first step to getting your first health coach client is to get certified. Check out ISSA’s Certified Health Coach online course for an industry-leading entry into a health and coaching career.