Learn The Art Of Enrollment Through Storytelling

Stories sell. Details don’t. A key to successful enrollment calls is mastering the art of enrollment through storytelling. When you focus on details like session frequency, session duration, or program costs, potential clients may lose interest. Their left brain takes over, replacing the possibilities of what they can achieve with active problem-solving and concerns about affordability.

By engaging the right brain with stories, you help potential clients relax and see themselves in the scenario. Stories create a sense of possibility, showing them that if coaching worked for others, it can work for them too. However, you must craft and share compelling stories that clients can envision themselves stepping into.

In this 60-minute class, you’ll develop your own story to enhance success in your connection calls.

Participants will:

• Leave with a roadmap for engaging potential clients.
• Be equipped with what to say, how to propose, and how to serve authentically.
• Understand the difference between selling and serving.
• Learn to stand in their professional self, not their social self.

Take a look at Gretchen‘s Stairway to Six Program: From Client Enrollment to Close – Build Your Six Figure Sales Strategy Start to Finish.

Join  Gretchen‘s Coaching for Coaches Facebook Group.

If you would like to connect and go deeper into what we have talked today, please email Gretchen at Coach@gretchenhydo.com.

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Listen to the podcast here

Learn The Art Of Enrollment Through Storytelling

In this episode, we are going to be doing one of our training. If you’re someone who is a visual learner, I encourage you to go over to YouTube and watch this or listen to it, however you want. I feel grateful that we have Gretchen as our guest. She got an evacuation notice from Los Angeles. I want to let you all know that we had a lot of people that pinged me. They’re in Los Angeles. They said they don’t have power. We will be sending out a replay. We usually don’t have these but we will be doing that for you. If Gretchen has to do it again, she has graciously volunteered to do it again as well.

For those of you who don’t know Gretchen, she is a master-certified coach and an ICF LA board member. She’s one of LA’s top coaches and a mentor known for helping coaches build thriving businesses. Her ICF-approved Stairway to Six program combines business strategy with personal growth. She’s been featured in Fast Company and The New York Times. She doesn’t even mention in this bio that she has two fabulous books that I’ll let her tell you about as well. I’m so excited. Gretchen, I’ll let you go ahead and take it.

Client Enrollment And The Power Of Storytelling

What I’m going to talk about is client enrollment and the importance of telling stories when you are doing your client enrollment and how storytelling is a connector and something that can serve a client rather than doing a hard sell to a client. Like Juliet said, I’m in Los Angeles. We have been very affected by the fires. Luckily, our home still stands but when I am thinking about what I want to bring to you, I want to help you with being able to position yourselves in ways that are going to help you with your business.

One thing that happens for all of us is that coaches are always looking for, “Where am I going to get my next client? What am I supposed to say to this particular client? What’s the best way to engage with this potential client?” What I can tell you is that before I was a coach, I was a publicist. One of the things that I learned in the PR world was that stories connect. Here’s what happens when you tell a good story.

Stories create possibility. A lot of times, people still resonate with when they were a little kid and their parents would read to them. There are some nice feelings when it comes to storytelling. Stories are a way to help your brain relax. When you’re trying to “sell” to somebody, the mind is getting worried. It starts thinking about money. It’s thinking about the details and what maybe they’re not going to get. It’s trying to be very logical where stories stay in the creative space.

The way that we’re going to come at this is I’m going to drop you into a connection call. What do I mean by that? Connection call for me is the first time that you are connecting with a potential client. It’s when you’re finding out their vision and what’s important to them. It’s where you’re talking about where they want to be in life. It’s where you’re anticipating and finding out what the gap is between where they are and where they want to go.

Inevitably, if you have received enough information and there’s enough engagement in chemistry between the two of you when you turn it over for questions to that potential client, they’re always going to ask something like, “How much does this cost? Will this work for me? Has this worked for your other clients?” I’m going to show you pieces of what can you say to help a potential client relax.

One of the things that I want you to think about is a story that you have with a client that worked out well. It’s someone that you’ve worked with in the past. There’s that beginning, middle, and end point. They came to you and were in this state. By the time they left, these things had happened. Everyone gets something in their head. Get a client’s story in your head and we’re going to talk about it. I want to help you with what can you do.

Here are the beginning, middle, and end points of stories. We think of it as the hero’s journey. A client came to you. They had some kind of a problem or they wanted something. There’s a transition point. That’s the middle. How did they leave at the end? Some of the prompts that can help you to think deeper are things like, “What was it like? What was that problem? What happened?” It’s maybe a decision that they made or an action that they took. “What’s it like now?”

Let’s say a client says something to me like, “I want to coach with you.” Maybe they come to me and they’re in the middle of a career transition. They’re not sure what they should do next in their career and they asked me, “Will coaching work?” I tell this story. I don’t know if it will work for you but I have a client who came to me. He was someone who was working for USC. He had three daughters all back to back. With the position that he was in at USC, his daughters would receive the equivalent of the same price of tuition that they would from an institution like USC.

It was one of his benefits for any school that they decided to go to as long as they were accepted. His wife was not very interested in his dreams or desires because she was seeing the million-dollar price tag that it was going to cost to put these three young women through college. He wanted to leave. He was no longer happy at USC. He’d been there for over twenty years and he was done. His wife was like, “No, you’re not. You have to stay there until our youngest graduates.” He was going to be in it for at least ten more years. That felt like a death sentence to him. That’s part one. That’s the “what did he come to me” is like.

Part two is, “What’s the transition?” We worked together for about six months. What we did was take it off the table that he would leave USC. His wife was like, “I will divorce you if you leave. You must stay.” We took that off the table but what we got to do was see what was available to him in areas that he was excited about. He was someone who liked to speak and write. These were not things that he was doing in his current position. During our time together, he came up with a book.

He wrote a book. It ended up becoming a New York Times bestseller. It had every single thing to do with his specialty. I won’t say what it is for anonymity. He ended up staying at USC on their payroll but he is not in the office. He travels around the world speaking about this particular topic. He does book signings and all three kids got to go to college.

That’s the way you tell a good story. If a client says, “Will it work for me,” I never say, “Yes, coaching will work for you. Coaching works.” Coaching does work but it doesn’t help when you say something like that that does not help a potential client relax their mind but hearing a story, they can feel the possibility. I’d love to get a little bit of feedback. What did you hear in that for yourselves? Go ahead, Sandy.

I heard that there’s positivity out of problems.

Christy?

I got that instead of thinking of all or nothing, you think outside the box and pivot. “How can I pivot this into something that’s working for me and makes me feel happier?”

What do you think it does for the potential client to hear something like that rather than, “We’d work together for twelve sessions. It’s going to cost you $5,000. By the end of it, I hope you have a roadmap for your career, book, or whatever it is.”

It’s the emotional connection. It’s relating to something and saying it’s possible for me through somebody else’s epic journey. That seems pretty amazing and epic for a story.

Let’s say this, too. What if the person is like, “Does that happen with all of your clients?” Of course not. Not everybody becomes a New York Times bestseller but have another story ready. The thing that you want to do too is think about the type of clients that you get. I get a lot of coaches who come to me striving to earn an income. I get a lot of entrepreneurs, women, and people in transition but I have success stories in all of the different buckets, depending.

Let’s say that that story felt too big, too pie in the sky. What’s another story that you have that you can serve up? The way that you want to say this when they say, “It worked for me,” is, “I never know if it will but I was working with a client who.” That’s where you give another story. If that was one story and they’re like, “That was big. What’s something more normal,” I’d say, “I was working with a client who had been in tech for years and years. She was sick of doing the data part of it. She came to me and we were trying to explore what else she could do.”

“She was 50. She knew she still had about 15 years left or maybe 17 that she was going to have to work in her career. She could not retire yet but she didn’t want to do this anymore. What we found is that because she was so good at getting information, finding things out, and distilling messages, one of the things that was interesting to her that she didn’t know before was being a private investigator.”

What I’m doing with all of my clients is listening for the components and the possibilities of, “These are all the things that you are. These are the ingredients. With those ingredients, this is what you could do with that.” She ended up becoming a private investigator. For all of you, you’re having some feelings about this, I hope, about what it is that happened to these clients. It’s the same thing that will happen with your potential client.

Using Client Stories To Build Connection And Possibility

Here’s what we’re going to do. Anytime I teach, it’s not just for you to sit here, nod your head, and think that it’s great. You’re going to go do it. We’re going to come back and then I’m going to teach you another way to engage with clients. This is what you’re going to do. You have these prompts here. I want you to think of the beginning, middle, and end. “The client came to me like this. In the middle, we did this. By the end, it was this.” It’s not going to sound beautiful yet because this might be the first time that you’ve done it but I want you to tell your buddy, peer, or client’s success story.

When you tell your success story, let the other person tell their success story. You go back and talk about ways to make it even better and more compelling but we’re looking for, “What’s the problem? What happened? What is it like now?” You’re going to come back and we’re going to talk about that. I’m going to show you how that leads to money and possibility. I’d love to hear how it went for you when you were telling your client’s story. What did you learn there?

I want to say that I learned very much. When you get curious and in love with someone’s story and the emotional connection, you want to buy it and get into it deeper. It’s not about numbers as much as it is about the heart. It’s about the heart. Alita told me a story and I’m sold. I’m done. It’s the emotional connection that’s always at the core of everything. You respect yourself with the dollar because it has to come together. The dollar is where the creativity lies in creating the creativity. It’s beautiful but start with the story.

Thank you, Sandy. Who else? How was this for you? Did anyone get stuck?

I didn’t get stuck but I had a big light bulb moment.

Share it.

My story was very small. I’m an energy coach so I help people get rid of their bad juju. I do very spiritual work. My clients are short and sweet. I had a very short and sweet client. When I was telling the story about it, I realized that there are times when clients contact me and they are all about, “I’ve heard about you. I would like you to work for me but what do you charge? When do you do it?”

I answer those questions. That’s so wrong. It’s not often. It’s once every 3, 4 months, or maybe 6 months. I shouldn’t answer those questions. I should ask, “What in the heck’s going on?” Get the personal side of what’s going on and then address, “This is how I can help that,” or the example, and then finally get to what it costs. It was great.

The Importance Of The Connection Call

Thank you for trying that exercise. I want to make sure that I have enough time to tell you the rest of the reasons that this is important. Everybody has a different way that they do client creation but one of the things that I teach is that I have a six-stage framework. The first part of that framework is the connection. The connection call is the first time that you talk to a potential client.

Like you were saying, Alita, they call, “How much do you cost?” If you start by answering, “I cost this much,” you’ve already lost them. The very first step in your connection call is to make sure that you have some pre-questions that you are going to send to a potential client before you even talk to them. What do I mean by that? There has to be a level of readiness.

I have three questions that I send out when someone wants to get ahold of me and get on my calendar. The questions are usually something like, “What do you want to accomplish in the next six months? What have you tried and what’s been hard?” If they do not answer those questions, they don’t get on my calendar because there’s no level of readiness. When people just want to know the price, we do not know about their vision.

As you’re doing this, make sure that you have a framework. Step one, you connect with the client and send out that email. On the connection call, I want you to slow it way down. This is not where you are selling them. You are deciding if this person is a good fit for you. You want to find out their vision and what it is that they need. You want to find someone serious about doing the work, even though we might be able to close a client if it is not the right time in their life, it doesn’t matter. You will just be pulling them through the keyhole and end up resentful. I know Juliet has had that experience.

Client Readiness And Vision

When a potential client starts asking questions like, “What do you charge? How many sessions is it,” I want you to slow them down and say, “I’m glad that we’re here.” You need to be able to give back their vision. What I’m hearing is you’d like to be able to build a coaching business where you are not worried about where you’re going to get your next client. You’re good at the coaching part but the business development has been hard. If you did that, it would change things for you because you wouldn’t be peddling your feet as much. You’d be able to spend time on the projects that you like.

Whatever it is that they’ve told you, if you cannot give them back their vision and what it would mean to them to accomplish it, you haven’t gone deep enough with them yet on the connection piece. That first part of the call is about spending time getting to know them and exposing what they want and why they don’t already have it. The why they don’t already have it is where the problem is. This is where you might know what kind of a story that you can tell.

When they say what you charge, slow them down, “I’m glad that you asked. Here’s what I’m hearing that you want but I have some requirements.” You need to have requirements for your clients. I know it sounds like, “Why would I have requirements? I just want their money.” If you don’t have requirements for your clients, you’re going to get terrible clients. They’re going to own you instead of you being a professional.

Requirements For Clients: Readiness, Commitment, And Coaching Fit

Here are the requirements I have for my clients. You can use them or change them but do have some. The first is that you’re ready. “I don’t know what else you have going on in your life. Is this the right time for coaching? If you coach with me, your life is going to change. There are going to be things that you have to do and mindsets that you’re going to change to be able to get and then bring back their vision.

Most of the time, they say they’re ready but sometimes they’re not. Sometimes there’s a loved one who is sick. Sometimes it’s not the right time but it doesn’t mean that they will never be a client. What we’re doing is making sure that our coaching is truly going to be helpful. Otherwise, people want their money back. They want to stop coaching. They don’t show up and you’re like, “What in the heck am I supposed to do?”

The second requirement is that they’re committed. This is a financial commitment and also a commitment to self. Are they committed to doing what it takes to be able to get that vision? The third is that I am going to coach every single person before I take them on as a client. I want them to experience coaching with me. For all of you, you do different coaching but I would have something that they can experience before I bring them on.

I tell them, “Let’s coach. We were just getting to know each other. We were seeing coaching as a modality that would fit for you but I want to make sure that we both feel like this could move forward, we are a good fit, and what you are looking for is coaching.” People come to you and think coaching is consulting or therapy. They think you’re going to just tell them what to do.

They think all sorts of things and it’s not usually what it is. For me, that’s a requirement. I don’t have them pay me anything for that. A lot of you are probably thinking, “Why wouldn’t you get paid?” You give them 30 minutes and 1 hour. The reason for this is so that they are ready, they see the importance, and you can make sure they are the right client.

I wanted to acknowledge what you said because it’s reaffirming. For me, it’s always worked in giving somebody one service for free so that they have the experience, the taste of it, and then there’s no pressure. I love what you said because sometimes people are afraid of free but it’s not. It’s an exchange of time and also to feel, “Do I want to be here once or twice a week with this person?” It’s lovely that you said that it’s about the experience. It’s always worked for me. If people are amazed, you have an hour of your free time. Currency is the most important thing you have. I’m exchanging it because I see the macro long-term vision of where this can go. Thank you for that.

You’re welcome. One thing that I will say is that what it does is it slows you and them down so that later, there’s no bait and switch. They can’t say, “I didn’t know.” Yes, you did. We did it. It slows you down. Do you like them? Just because someone will pay you money. Are you excited to work with this client? If you’re not and you’re only excited about paying your mortgage, they are not the right client for you. Keep going. There’s someone else. Juliet, what were you going to say?

Listen to how powerful this sounds. I would say about 80% of the coaches I speak to feel disempowered in this area. They’re anxious. “Is this person going to hire me?” It’s not all about if they want you or you want them. Listen to some of their responses because for me, if I hear someone with the question, “What else have you done before,” when I go through that and I hear they blame it on outside things, I probably don’t want them. They’re not going to be someone who’s going to be accountable for the process.

The Importance Of Staying In Your Professional Self

Here’s a tip. I want you to show up in your practice as a professional, not in your social self. Professional self behaves like a dentist or a lawyer. You go to the dentist, you have a cracked tooth or whatever’s wrong with you, and the dentist says it’s going to be $5,000. You go, “That’s so much money.” The dentist doesn’t say, “Let me give you a discount. Let me help you.” What they say is, “Here’s Care.com. You can go there and get a payment plan. Getting your tooth fixed or not is not my problem.”

I don’t mean this in an unloving way. It’s the same thing with a lawyer. You need something and they’ve got your answer. They’re not discounting it just so that you feel okay about your money story. What happens with coaches is your money story and the story of laughter and value shows up when you say the price. Let’s say that your package is $1,000 and you are already sure that this person would not pay $1,000. You might find yourself saying, “It’s $1,000 but I’ll give you half off.” Why? We don’t even know who this person is.

When a person says to you, “That’s a lot of money,” it’s not for you to fix. Here’s the deal. We buy things all the time if we think that they’re going to solve the problem of our vision. Think of timeshares that people buy. It’s this vision of families being together and having great opportunities. Most people don’t have money for that. They don’t use it but they did buy it. Boats that you’re going to take on the water and you can have these experiences. They’re in people’s driveway. People find money for their vision.

The Role Of Vision And Money In Coaching

Here’s what I want you to know about that. If you have not spent enough time on the vision, then no amount of money, however big or small that you propose, is going to be the right amount. The other thing is that money prepares people. It is an indicator of readiness. If someone says that’s a lot of money, great, you’re glad. I never argue. I say, “It is. I wouldn’t want you to do it unless you were 100% sure it was going to work for you. Let’s coach.”

That’s why I give that session. That way, you can see what coaching is about. If I’ve told them the story, it’s six sessions, or whatever I’ve told them, there’s no experience in that so they’re on guard. When they’ve had the experience and they’ve heard that other people have had this work, it changes things. You want to slow this way down and think about this as the way that you advertise.

I don’t do a lot on Facebook or ads. What I do is have a lot of client conversations. Connection call and coaching call. You then propose. “Based on your vision and everything that you’re saying that you want, my highest recommendation is we work together for this long. What we’re going to do is work on that vision and create a strategy session by session that’s going to support it. We’re going to see what your blocks are and where you’re saying you want to spend your time. We’re going to do an energy audit. You say you want this but what are you doing?”

You’re exposing them the whole way through. We are not here to be our client’s friends ever. That is not what this business is. If you become your client’s friend, you are muddying the waters. It doesn’t mean you won’t be friendly but you want to make sure that this is a professional service. If I become friends with my coaching clients, what happens is that mirror that I’m willing to hold up, those provocative questions that I’m willing to ask, and the places that I’m willing to say, “There’s a blind spot here,” I might not do it anymore because I’ve dropped into social self.

Staying in your professional self versus your social self is going to help you every single time. We are not here to be liked. We’re here to do a service. Along the way, they are going to like you. That’s completely fine but that should not be your number one. You are here to serve and serve powerfully. Where does this come back to the art of storytelling? When I am telling the story of what it was like for a client, what happened, and what it’s like now, I’m basing that on the power of what happened.

I had a client and we worked together for a year. At one point, her husband cheated on her. I was so mad at that husband. I felt very protective of this client. I would have told the client, “Where does he live? I want to key his car,” not that I would do that but if you did read my book, I might. I wouldn’t tell the client that because then we’d be in friendship mode. I instead served her from a high level of, “With that information, what do you want to do? Where are you at? What do you need?”

Even the person from USC. Your wife won’t let you quit. I had a lot of ideas and opinions but it doesn’t matter that doesn’t serve the client. We have to stay in our professional selves. That way, when you give your highest recommendation and you say, “My highest recommendation is 6 months and the tuition is $10,000,” you’re not wrapped up in, “But they need a roof. Their son needs rehab.” These are all the things that you’re going to hear.

You’re a professional. This is something that they want. How much is their vision worth? Here’s what I’ll tell you. With sales, everybody wants to be sold to in a high-level way. Nobody wants the kind of sale where it’s like, “If you do it today, I’ll give you $2,000 off.” If you can give me $2,000 off today, you can do it tomorrow. You own the business. What kind of BS is this? That always makes people mad.

I’ll use this experience. Think of this if you were getting a suit. Women, you’re going to Nordstrom. You have a very important business event to go to or a wedding or a reunion. You haven’t seen these people and you want to look good. You need an undergarment to hold it all in. You go for the undergarment but the salesperson is like, “It’s a reunion or business event.” She will bring you three dresses.

“This one compliments your eyes. This one compliments your waist. With this one, you look $1 million in.” She then brings you some jewelry and shoes. You leave with all of it because she served you. You only wanted to spend $100 and you left spending $500. It felt like service. When you’re serving people, never be afraid of your number. People will pay for their vision but you have to slow down enough to know what that vision is. That’s where stories help to connect that.

I said a whole lot to you but this is what I teach. This is how I help coaches. I help them figure out where I find clients. What do I say to clients? How do I connect with clients? What’s the framework? We go from the connection call to the coaching call to proposing and making your highest recommendation to closing the loop, not doing the, “I’m just following up to see how you are.” No, you’re not. You’re following up to see if you’re going to get their money. Be honest. Closing the loop, taking it off the table, or getting started. That’s what you do in a coaching contract and it all starts with that story.

Commitment And Readiness

You work spiritually for health and wellness. I hear a lot about people who come to you and they don’t make a commitment. They want to quit fixing. This is going to take away the person who wants a quick fix-me versus who’s committed to healing. What you’re looking for is those people who are committed to healing, not the people who come in and say, “Alita, you’re an energy healer. Fix me now.” What you want are those people who are committed to that long-term relationship.

The other thing is long-term relationships, yes, but commitment to themselves and the change. Coaching is always a partnership. Even though we’re hired because they want something else like energy, healing, losing weight, or whatever it might be, they have to do their part. That’s why I have the requirements of readiness and commitment. Are you committed to doing what you need to do on your end?

I can give someone all the things and say all the right things. If they’re not committed or ready, sometimes the plate is too full. It’s not a good time for them to start because they’re not going to be able to fully commit. It doesn’t mean that they won’t be your client later so we can’t come from a scarcity mindset. Can you mention your experience of storytelling of your hero’s journey? I imagine it’s okay to touch on it but not okay to talk about yourself too much.

I don’t talk about myself with my potential clients. If they want to ask me questions like, “How did you start? How did you get into the business,” I will talk about that but your story is not relevant when it comes to this. You want to talk about them and their vision. If you tell too much about yourself, you’re getting into the friend category. It’s becoming too familiar.

You do want to be a professional. Your dentist isn’t going to tell you all about their problems. It’s not appropriate. I will tell you this. I had to have a procedure done for my ear. While the person was doing it, I was awake and he was sticking things up my nose to numb it. He’s telling me all these things about how his daughter came home as a son and what he is supposed to do now that he has a son. He has stuff going up my nose and I’m thinking, “Why are you telling me this? I don’t need to know this.”

Keeping A Neutral Space

It didn’t make me like him more or connect with him more. If anything, I wanted to get away from him. Not because of the story but I’m like, “Pay attention. You got some instrument up my nose. What are you doing?” We think that we are going to connect with people with our stories. Yes, there can be an element of that but you want to stand as the professional instead of the friend. That’s the most important.

I was wondering if the story pertains to what the person is going through with a problem and if it’s okay to relate a story that would relate to them.

It’s better to do it if it’s your client. You had a client that you were working with. Let’s say that you’re going to tell something personal about yourself. I don’t know that that matters much because that’s how you got through it. As the coach, that’s not what we’re doing. We want to keep a neutral space. If someone knows that I’ve been through this and this, they’re already going to view you differently. You always want to say, “I don’t know if coaching will work for you but I was working with a client who had some similar circumstances. They came to me like this. This is what happened and this is what they’re like now.”

Mine is unique because it’s book coaching and helping them bring their vision to life and then out to the world. They always ask me, “How long will it take?” I never know how to answer that question so what I usually say is, and guide me if I’m doing this wrong, “I can’t answer that question because it depends on you.” Things go back and forth. If you’re dedicated, you work hard, and you work with me, then it’s going to go much faster. I usually tell them my fastest client was two months from raw idea to finished product. That was because Juliet needed the book by a certain date. She was extremely motivated. Is that appropriate?

Here’s what I would say about that. It’s not that it’s wrong but you might want to firm up the way you do it. What I hear in that is you’re letting the client do the leading. “It depends how long it’s going to take.” Let’s say it’s a $20,000 book program. The way that it works is each week, you send me a chapter. It’s due by Saturday. Regardless of if they’ve done it or not, that’s when it’s due. They know they’re going to have it done in this amount of time.

Maybe they would get it done faster and they can ask you about that. “Can we do it faster?” “In that amount of time, I’m going to read it and I’ll do an edit. We’ll have a phone call about it. We’ll go over what worked. In the next week, your next chapters do.” What will happen is they’re going to say things like, “There were the fires. There was this.” There’s always some reason that they’re not doing it. When someone’s asking you how long will it take, what they’re saying is, “I need a framework to get it done. If I could get it done by myself, it would already be done.”

That makes sense. Thank you.

I wanted to ask another question. If I have a story about myself, can I rewrite it to be from a client and pretend that it was a client?

I’m sure that you can but something that I wonder, Dorothy, is with your clients, I bet you do have enough in there that you can pull on client experience. What kind of a coach are you, Dorothy?

I’m in the process of being a coach.

One of the things that you’re going to learn is that it’s not ever about us. It’s always about them. With coaching, we’re not relaxing. We’re keeping a frame so that the client has the space to do what they want to do. If you want to rewrite some stories so that they feel like they’re about a client, that’s okay. It could work but I would say that with enough experience and time, you will have some real stories.

Thank you.

How is what I shared going to help you with client creation, Christy?

For me, it makes me feel more confident in talking. That’s a tough one. I like the professional thing, not being their friend. That’s a big deal. It makes me feel more confident in talking to someone like I have answers to the questions.

I have a comment of a takeaway that came to me and it’s why I am having so much trouble remembering these little success stories I can share with potential clients. All of a sudden, I saw myself creating my testimonials. If I sit down when I think of a client experience that was a shareable one, I could log it into a file so that I always have it. That’ll help log it into my memory. I deal with lots of clients because of my work. It’d be good to have those few success stories out there.

Remember that it’s always the beginning, middle, and end. “They came to me like this with this problem. Here’s the transition that happened in here and what it’s like now.” That’s what people are looking for.

I can see myself. With that mathematical side of my brain, I want to go look at a file and pick out what I want.

Thank you, Alita.

Sandy?

It’s a comment to say thank you, Gretchen. I know that this is to be applied to the professional part of our lives but it carries over into the personal as well. There’s a lot of stuff there that’s good and upholding yourself at that level. It’s like somebody or a few people said, “I never made this up.” You are the CEO of your life and health. How do you carry it? It’s great professionally for wherever this is going to take me but also on a personal level. Thank you. Juliet, you’re amazing for coordinating this. I share a lot of love here. Thank you. I wanted to say it carries over. There has to be a separation between professional and personal but sometimes it’s the positivity of the professional spilling into the personal that helps you uphold your values for yourself. Thank you.

Connection Call Framework And Workshop Promo

I have a link to my connection call scripts. A lot of you probably wonder, “What am I even supposed to say to potential clients?” This is going to give you an outline. It’s one of the steps of my framework of what you say and where you find them. They say this, you say that. Make it your own. There are some follow-ups in there too of things that you can do.

I have a three-hour workshop. It’s going to take this but do it on steroids. It’s going to help any coach who is trying to build their business and struggling with client creation to have a kickstart for 2025. We’re going to go over more of the art of storytelling but more than that, we’re going to go over the connection call. What do you say? How do you say it? We’re going to go over how you handle money objections and your feelings about money.

I gave you a gift code for 50% off. I hope that you can come. It’s a promo for my Stairway to Six program, which is only focused on business development. It is not focused on helping you to be a coach. It bridges the gap where coaching school stops. Coaching school teaches you how to be a great coach but doesn’t teach you a lot about client creation.

This is a high-intensity experience and it’s to help you to get to your first $100,000. That’s what it is. Many coaches are broke. They don’t know how to make any money. They struggle even to get $50,000 or $25,000. They don’t know what to charge, where to find clients, and what to say to clients. In this one, spent five days of me in an intensive. It’s a great group of people who join. You’ll be glad that you did.

If you want to be a part of my community, I do a free teaching every month. That’s the Coaching for Coaches. If you want to connect, you can email me. I’m glad that I got to be here with all of you. It’s so nice to see you. I hope some of you will come to my workshop. It would only cost you $49 and it’s going to be a great event.

Gretchen, thank you. That was amazing. Our next guest is going to be Joey Garrity. She’s going to be on February 7th, 2025, Superstar Strategies to Transform Influence into Earnings. You can register for that at BAMegTraining.com. We’ll also have Rebecca Bertoldi, who is my agency directive from Go High Level. We’re going to start doing monthly training. The first one is on February 20th, 2025. You can go to GHLMonthly.com.

If you guys aren’t using Go High Level, you are missing out. I saved $400 getting on it consolidating email and my social media. I’ve got websites over there. I’m no longer paying for hosting fees and other places. It’s an all-in-one. At least come and find out about it. Dorothy uses it. I’m not sure if Carrie does but I know a couple of you on here are using it. It’s pretty amazing stuff. Thank you, Gretchen. Thanks, guys. I’ll see you soon.

Have a great day.

Important Links

• Gretchen Hydo
• Stairway to Six
• Coaching for Coaches on Facebook
• BAMegTraining.com
• GHLMonthly.com
• Coach@GretchenHydo.com

About Gretchen Hydo

Gretchen Hydo, Master Certified Coach and ICF LA Board Member, is one of LA’s top coaches and a mentor known for helping coaches build thriving businesses. Her ICF-approved Stairway to Six program combines business strategy with personal growth. She’s been featured in Fast Company and the Chicago Tribune.