It’s about connection.

And doggedly treating marketing as a box to tick can often mean we overlook the personal connection part.

I’m Cath, and I write Follower To Client - a weekly marketing newsletter aimed at coaches who don’t want to spend all day…

• cold DMing,

• cranking ad spend or

• chancing going viral…

…and when it comes to personal connection…

It’s really more about quality, than quantity.

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That’s not always best done on a platform where the goal is to publish as much volume as possible, and drown out the competition.

More than ever I’m hearing coaches talk about social media as this obligation that keeps them burned out…

A place that they have to show up, but they don’t really enjoy.

And - as an introverted millennial - that’s crazy to me.

I think the internet is the coolest thing ever.

It grants an extraordinary level of access to people with shared interests that you’d never otherwise get to meet.

I remember spending hours every day hanging out on niche forums and message boards - skipping all the small talk and just talking about special interests with people from all over the world.

People who have now been in my life for… 20 years? More, in some cases.

But like anything, when you attach a sense of obligation - especially when it’s something you must do to make money - I can see why it would stop being fun.

And if it’s NOT fun for you…

And you don’t enjoy it - but see it as a necessary part of having an online business…

Here’s an alternative option…

Having a social media presence is (in my opinion) a must for an online business owner…

But you don’t need to make all platforms equally important.

I show up in my Instagram stories and DMs every day - but I don’t publish to my grid every day.

I publish a Substack note most days, but I only publish an article once a week.

Find the platform you love, and go all in on it…

But have something on other platforms that gets updated regularly…

Like a lead magnet you offer on LinkedIn once a month…

And then have the conversation in a place that doesn’t drain your soul… like your email list… or on a roundtable once a month… or in a WhatsApp group chat…

The 9-Grid:

I heard this idea recently on a podcast…

Let me dig out the episode for you…

The guest was KP from Jupiter Content Co - this was the first time I heard this idea, and I heard it from her.

KP’s Substack (the guest from the episode).

Sara’s Substack (the host of this podcast).

The idea was so simple, I wanted to punch myself in the face for not thinking of it myself:

Treating your instagram account like a ‘zine style landing page - with 3 pinned posts, 3 old posts, and 3 posts that get rotated out…

And archiving everything else.

The idea here is that you update 1-3 posts per month so it’s reasonably current if anyone checks…

And you direct all that traffic to your email list, or your current offer…

So that you’re not spending all your time and effort maintaining an Instagram grid and more of your time and attention goes into the offers and fulfilment of your services.

I thought this was an awesome idea.

Instagram can be hugely labour intensive - and if you don’t really enjoy it - this could be a great way to maintain a current presence, without it swallowing all your time.

That way, you can do the parts of your marketing you enjoy more…

And turn more of your followers to clients.

So - this week’s action step:

• Pick your primary platform (don’t try to be everywhere).

• Go audit (and possibly update) what's pinned on the others.

I sent my sister a text about a client issue that had been on my mind.

One of our longest-term client had a falling click rate in their emails - so obviously, I’m obsessing about fixing that number.

You might think:

Great open rate but falling click rate = great copy in the subject line, weaker copy in the body.

…that’s unlikely, given that the same writer who writes the subject lines writes the rest of the emails.

You might think longer copy means they aren’t reading the full email, so they’re not seeing the link to book a call.

…we can test that.

I was in my pyjamas, sitting with my husband while he watched TV.

And thinking - obsessing - about all the things that might explain it that aren’t “people work on their own timelines, and we have to be patient.”

Because, while true, clients hate hearing that.

When I realised:

I’m 99% sure we mathematically can’t fix this with copy.

Today’s article gets into:

• why your CTR will fall in a maturing list

• why the copy is almost definitely not the cause

• what you can do about it instead

For those of you who use email marketing to turn your followers into clients, you likely have a couple of core metrics you keep your eye on.

The 2 that are easiest to see in your email dashboard:

• open rates

• click through rates

But after your list has been around for a while, and has grown pretty big…

Some of these numbers get distorted because not everyone on that list is equally eligible to click your links.

I’ll walk through it…

If you have 100 people on your email list, and send an email inviting them to book a call.

10 book the call - 10% CTR.

Maybe they buy, maybe they don’t.

But now, those 10 people aren’t like the rest of your list. They’re not eligible.

My eligible pool drops from 100 people to 90 people.

Then, we add another 100 people to the list, and send another email inviting people to book.

Now there are 200 people total on the list, and let’s say another 10 people click the link.

Except now it’s 10 clicks against 200 people - so 5% not 10%

CTR is halved - so you start thinking this email isn’t as good.

The copy isn’t as effective.

It’s too long.

The hook is off.

But this will keep happening if the list grows quickly.

AND, to make matters worse…

Over time the number of people who become ineligible grows too.

I imagine it might look something like this…

• Clicked the link, booked the call, bought coaching & is now a current client: They’re now ineligible to click the link to book the sales call. They still need marketing - but not the same kind.

• Clicked the link, booked the call, didn’t buy on the call: Maybe they wanted time to think about it, maybe it wasn’t a fit. But they’re not going to click the link again any time soon. It’s not never - but it’s not right now (this is why I don’t like to push people to a call before they’re ready, because when you push it’s gotta be a “no”)

• Clicked the link, but their call was cancelled: They raised their hand, but YOU or your team cancel the call based on the pre-qualification questions. They don’t qualify for your main offer and they’ve been filtered out. But they’re unlikely to click that specific link again.

• Recent graduates from your coaching programme: This segment will only ever grow. People who have been clients, but who left recently. Say, within the last 90 days. They might want to come back at some point… but probably not yet. Might take months or years to win-back.

There may even be more groups than that, based on your funnel. But they all have one thing in common:

They are not eligible to click again YET.

They’re not an eligible, lukewarm prospect who’s seeing your offer and considering whether to buy right now.

So they’re basically ballast in your denominator and will contribute ZERO to your numerator, structurally.

This gets worse over time

The bigger your list gets - with more aggressive growth - the bigger the population you’re comparing the clickers to.

The older your list gets, the bigger the pool of non-eligible segments are compared to the genuinely-in-market pool.

This is what a healthy list will do over time - it’s got history.

But that means it’ll never go back to being 100 blank-slate strangers who are seeing your invitation to book a call for the first time.

CTR is not a stable metric to benchmark against.

It’s a shifting, changing population who have each interacted with you, and your broadcasts differently.

Clicks show that they’re curious

There’s another element to this.

And I don’t really hear coaches talking about this much.

MQL - marketing qualified leads - versus SQL - sales qualified leads.

The MQL matches your ideal buyer.

For me: You’re a health and fitness coach with an online presence.

The SQL matches that profile AND there’s evidence of intent.

For me: You’re a health and fitness coach with an online presence - who’s booked into my sales calendar and specified a problem that you’re ready to actually solve.

Not every lead is created equally.

A click is just curiosity about what’s on the other side of the link.

Someone clicking on “book a call” to see what’s on the other side of the link is not meaningfully different, from a data standpoint, than someone who’s spent 5 minutes writing into the calendly box what they want help with.

To the CTR they look exactly the same.

But they’re NOT the same quality of lead.

Don’t mix up someone who’s “on my list” as pipeline.

They’re not leads until THEY say they’re leads.

2 Things to test right now.

Some markets are cautious about clicking.

Some are curious.

And some are very click-happy, but don’t take any action.

You could try:

1. Plain text URLs in the body of the email, not a hyperlink.

2. A screenshot of the next page, so they know what it’ll look like when they click.

These things are more about trust building and transparency than copy, I know. But worth testing, from time to time.

Does that mean CTR is useless?

If CTR will decay over time, and the scale of list growth means that can’t be fixed with copy - should we just abandon it?

No, I don’t think so.

CTR in a BIG, mature list will fall because of how the denominator works.

But it’s still a useful measurement.

If that’s the kind of list you’ve got, I’d put a REALLY SIMPLE segment in place for your broadcast list…

NOT a smart list.

NOT a filter before they get on the broadcast list.

An actual segment within the broadcast list.

• Eligible vs ineligible: strip out ineligible clickers (current clients, recently booked, disqualified, etc) before you calculate the percentage - so you get like-for-like comparisons over time.

And once you’ve done that, you can look at 2 more figures:

• Raw click volume: rather than a percentage, is the absolute number of clickers going up, even if the ratio is going down?

• Booked calls: this is the best measure - your actual pipeline of leads booked into your calendar.

These aren’t perfect, either.

People’s behaviour is messy, and they’ll often re-engage on their own timeline in a way that really has little to do with us.

But this will make the data collection more accurate.

Less “what percentage of this audience is clicking the email?” and more “are we bringing the right people closer to a buying decision?”

CTR is part of that.

Like email is part of the whole ecosystem (social for attention, email to build trust, calls to sell)…

But it’s not the full story. All the pieces work together.

But that’s what the coach came to buy… “better” copy.

A punchier headline. A more compelling hook.

People come to me for that because they know I spent years writing copy for coaches.

But - even though this is the most visible part of what creates the sale…

It’s not the only part.

And it’s become just one of the tools we use for our clients.

Today, I’ll tell you about 5 others…

And these are things I actually reach for more often.

Because a great offer doesn’t need great copy… and even great copy can’t save a shitty offer.

Coaches don't need more followers. You need better marketing to the ones already watching. Follower to Client delivers weekly insights, paired with proven frameworks, swipes and templates from inside the fitness coaching businesses we write for so you can convert your warm audience… without cold outreach, ad spend, or going viral.

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Welcome coach,

Today I’m gonna tell you about 5 real problems I’ve solved in coaching businesses in the last few months - and only 1 of them got fixed with writing…

Problem #1: The application process sucks

One coach had a Typeform in his bio, and around 100 applicants a week starting the form… but only 20 people were finishing it.

Everyone assumes the drop-off is about more persuasive copy, and a lack of trust…

But in reality, the form was too demanding too soon. It was selling coaching, not the sales call. I see people forget this one a lot: you’re only ever selling the next step.

I got in there, and messed around with the form.

Took completion from 20% to 71% - with ZERO new copy.

If nothing else improved in the funnel at all, that would be worth 100K over 12 months to that business.

Tool used: logic, not language.

Problem #2: Getting stuck in requests

This was actually the same business. Leads were starting the application process, but weren’t replying to the pre-call structures (like emails) that were in place, so they weren’t showing up for the calls.

Expensive when you have a sales team.

I showed him how he could make a close friends story on instagram that would be shown only to those applicants…

And get himself out of the requests folder and get those calls booked back onto his sales calendar.

Super simple. No real copy involved.

Problem solved in 24 hours.

Tool used: platform mechanics, not language.

Problem #3: Unnecessary steps

I’m working on a funnel right now that has a 5% opt in page, sending people to a VSL page that converts at over 25% before I’ve done a single thing.

The instinct is to improve the weak page.

But that page doesn’t actually need to exist at all. If the VSL is cranking at 5x, stick the optin box under the VSL - after they’ve heard your offer.

Better quality leads, improved ecosystem.

Tool used: funnel architecture, not language.

Problem #4: Too many CTAs in email

I looked at a welcome sequence recently for a (brilliant!) charity. The first email asked someone to:

1. Donate

2. Buy merch

3. Adopt an animal

4. Sponsor a different animal

It wasn’t that the copy was BAD…

It didn’t work because no one made a decision about the ONE thing we wanted to go all in on.

And so it felt a bit cluttered when we actually had tons of breathing room in the rest of the sequence.

A lot of clarity is about just making a decision and going all in.

Tool: strategy & sequencing, not language.

Problem #5: Advanced copy that’s hard to read

This is the one where writing actually is the fix.

I ran some ad copy though Hemingway recently, and it came back at post-graduate reading level.

Long sentences. Advanced vocab.

The founder was 100% aware of the exacting personal standards he exercised…

He didn’t want to publish anything that wasn’t as sharp as their standards as a company.

Totally get that.

But if you’re doing amazing things - like they were - the goal is to have someone read as much about it as possible.

If you want someone to care, they have to understand it.

Here, the fix actually was language.

Short sentences. Plain, unfancy language. Stories.

Conclusion:

Most of what moves the needle in getting someone from a follower to a client isn’t usually the writing.

It’s how you made them feel.

It’s putting yourself in the reader’s shoes.

It’s making it easy for them to get the message and take the next action.

It’s using the right amount of friction at the right time (that’s what she said).

And THEN using exceptional copy to connect with them.

Fixing the wrong problem - even elegantly - is still the wrong problem.

Here’s what would happen:

We’d take on a coach as as client, objectively crush it for them - get them the kind of results that should make someone a client for life…

• More calls booked

• More attributable pipeline

• More opportunities to extend LTV

…and after a few months, they’d leave - almost 100% of the time - on good terms.

I thought it was me.

What else could it be?

We're making money hand over fist, so there’s no situation where you can’t afford us.

If anything, we’re WAY underpriced for the work we do.

So I thought I must be hard to work with.

Maybe I am lol - but there’s another factor at play here that I circled for the longest time without quite catching it.

And just last week, it clicked for me.

Whether a client can afford us isn’t just about how much we charge. It’s also about how much THEY charge.

Maybe that’s obvious to you.

It sure as shit wasn’t obvious to me.

Years ago, we had a client with 2 parts of his business:

1. A SaaS product (that was basically a GHL whitelabel)

2. And a coaching offer

He wanted to sell the software and upsell people into his coaching because the software was a cheaper, lower-ticket, “easier yes” on the front end.

But I told him to flip it.

Sell the coaching first, and give them access to the software to retain them longer term.

(I can’t believe I got THAT close and still it didn’t click… I was basically there.)

To break even on the SaaS product, we needed to get him 33 sales. To break even on the coaching, we only needed to get him 2 sales.

At the time, I kinda saw the significance of how it applied to him, but not how it applied to us.

It’s not the buyer psychology of low ticket offers - that low prices mean poor quality buyers.

I’m not even sure that’s relevant.

But instead…

It’s about the front end economics of the offer.

Capital, liquidity and TAM.

If your front-end offer - the cash you collect the moment they say yes - doesn’t liquidate your investment in us, you have no cash runway.

And with no runway, you’d struggle to keep anyone on a retainer, regardless of how well they perform for you.

So when clients leave because they can’t afford to stay - it’s because they have front-end economics that need them to do more volume than they’ve got.

And either they don’t have the audience, or they don’t have the capital to spend on ads too - to replenish the volume.

Gym owners struggle badly with this

I was on a call with a gym owner recently - awesome guy, really like him, local to me and we’ve worked together on & off for years.

He has a real, genuine crisis issue: retention.

He’s leaking money every month, and payments from his existing members are failing and they’re getting missed.

He’s already paying an agency to handle his ads - but they’ve left him on read for a week with no reply.

I think to myself, “we can sort this, and this will be an easy yes for him.”

So I explain how we work, how we help, what we do… and I drop my price on him.

He’s visibly uncomfortable.

He seemed keen, but this number is stressing him out.

I get it. He sells gym memberships - which can’t cost much more than about £50/ month, if that…

He hears my price and doesn’t think, “good, this solves an LTV issue” - he thinks… “shit, I need XXX new members just to cover this expense.”

AND:

“I can only take on X new clients at a time, because I’m constrained by classes, geography, etc.”

Of course it felt like an insane number to him.

It’s a symptom of a much bigger issue.

You can’t absorb MY front end economics if YOUR economics are a fraction of what I charge.

There’s no liquidity in your machine.

For me, it’s just as hard to market something for volume as it is to sell high ticket. Same kinda effort, same kinda funnels, ads etc.

But lower ticket doesn’t give you any breathing room.

Cash flow is oxygen - and lower ticket models are always scrambling for margin.

2 Big lessons for me:

Probably both sides of the same coin…

If you’re the business owner, your front end cash collected has to give you enough liquidity that you can re-invest in some sort of acquisition.

It doesn’t have to be me.

But it might need to be ads, or a video editor or something.

You can’t buy help if you don’t have runway - there’s no cash to do it with. You’ve GOT to raise your prices to keep operating.

And if you sell a service, like I do:

Our job is to work with people whose economics can actually carry you. It’s not about being a high ticket snob at ALL.

It’s about picking people to work with where what you do can have a meaningful economic impact on their business.

I reckon it comes down to 3 questions:

1. How many calls do you book per month?

2. What’s your close rate?

3. What do you collect on the front end, per client?

Generally, coaches know these numbers and they’re not precious about them.

But from these answers, I can now tell if I can help someone long term - or if they’ll have to jump ship in 3 months because they’re running out of people to sell to.

The thing that’s pissed me off about this…

Every single client I’ve lost to this issue I probably could have seen coming from the shape of their offer.

And now, I’ll be able to make better-informed decisions before we even have a call.

We’re told charging less is humble.

It’s accessible for the buyer. It gets your foot in the door with someone and gives you a chance to serve them with lower risk.

Maybe.

But underpricing forces you into a volume game, which drains liquidity and is unsustainable for everyone.

It’s pretty unkind, because it sets the coach up into a forced churn scenario that neither of us want to be in.

I actually feel so stupid for not realising this sooner.

I was almost there too - with the SaaS v Coaching guy, and the client that once told me, “I only need to make 1 sale for us to be ROI positive”.

I was within touching distance and missed it.

Until now.

Pricing really isn’t about worth, or confidence or mindset… even though we agonise over it.

It’s literally just economics.

I could tell you that people buy in their own time. That adjusting the copy to create more urgency isn’t the bold creative strategy you’ve been led to believe. You know you can’t fix a timing issue with pressure - at least, not if you want clients who are actually committed to what they need to do.

Instead, I want to shift your perspective.

That when they come towards you without pressure, they are bought in, and loyal, with huge trust… because you didn’t squeeze them.

There are 3 ways you can turn your followers into clients.

1. Running ads to get your offer in front of the right people

2. Posting on social media or platforms like email where people already trust you

3. Borrowing other people’s audiences and making them an offer

But no matter HOW you’re connecting with people to make that offer, people are still maturing at their own speed.

They can see your ads - and be reminded of you - but if they’re not ready, they won’t buy…

They can see your posts - and get to know the way you do things - but if now isn’t the right time, they just need you to keep posting.

They can discover you from someone they already trust - and that gives you an advantage over a total stranger but they still need to get to know you and what you’re all about…

Most coaches only have one gear:

The urgent ask, made over and over again.

Delivered on the fastest, loudest channel they’ve got (usually Instagram, because Instagram rewards urgency and punishes patience).

But social media is an excellent tool for measuring the readiness someone already has and getting pretty fast feedback on your offer.

Not so good at letting someone mature at their own pace, because if they don’t engage with you often, you fall out of their algorithm.

Email gives you the chance to bring someone up to temperature slowly.

They get to know you, spend time with you - through stories about your methods, proof, and repetition. You’re not forcing a decision they’re not ready to make - and because you get massively more data from email than you do with social media…

Coaches can make a precise offer at the right time.

Biggest mistake coaches can make is seeing their email ONLY as a cash cow - when it’s data rich, and a private dialogue with your most trusted people.

Don’t force them to say no too soon.

It used to be enough to do all your marketing and selling on Instagram.

I knew coaches with 6 figure businesses that they ran from an iPhone. But that’s not the case any more.

If you force someone to make a buying decision before they’re ready, the answer is always no. And without email, they're a lost lead - no time to warm up, no chance to recover.

Email has become an essential safety net for coaches.

Especially if you’re paying (with time or energy) to create attention and desire.

One step you can take today…

This will take about 20 minutes.

Pull up the people who have engaged with you in the last 7 days.

Opened emails, clicked links, watched a webinar, engaged with your social content… but that HAVEN’T bought anything from you.

Pick 5 people every day - and send them a DM:

That’s it. No offer, no CTA.

You’ll get some people who ignore you & leave you on read.

That’s ok. That just means they’re not ready yet.

You’ll have some start chatting to you.

And that conversation may spark some questions.

There is a proportion of your audience right now who are ALMOST ready to buy. They are just waiting for a tiny thing to feel safe enough to book the call with you.

People book the call when they feel safe, not because you made them feel stupid for not doing it sooner.

The vibe is “I see you, I’m still here, still constant.”

Let them mature.

Some lead magnets create leads.

Some create buyers.

These are not the same.

By the time someone has consumed your lead magnet, they should be a better prospect for you.

Not just warmer lead, but a BETTER prospect.

I was on a call this week with a nutritionist whose top lead magnet was a healthy food download.

It was solid, well-made, genuinely useful. It converts well - as in: people download it, and it’s adding hundreds of leads to his email list every week.

…None of them ever book a call.

He came to me to diagnose why - and when I tell you, it’ll seem obvious to you:

He’s made something that teaches people to solve their own problem.

Someone who downloads a food list is - obviously - trying to DIY their nutrition. The lead magnet is working perfectly… but NOT for the kind of person he wants to attract.

My best advice for you on this is to work backwards from the problem you get paid to solve.

What problem do they bring into the first 30 days of the coaching experience, and can I help them solve that problem in a lead magnet?

If the answer with your current asset is that you’ve solved it and they’re sorted… that’s a dead end & you need to redesign it.

The real gold that no one talks about

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Even when the lead magnet is doing its job, most coaches waste the information it generates.

Say you’ve got 3-4 lead magnets on different but related topics.

For example - for this nutritionist, he might have:

• Gut health

• Energy

• Weight loss

• Performance

The mistake most coaches make is putting everyone in the same broadcast list, and send them the same emails and hammer the same “book a call” CTA forever.

You’re sitting on a goldmine of information there.

Your email list is a system that actually tells you a TON about the people on the list.

Especially click data - that tells you what people are actually interested in.

Common mistakes coaches make:

• Sending the same emails to everyone

• Sending emails without planning what you want to learn from them

• No segmentation in the list - everyone gets the same content

• Not looking at click data at all

• Not making targeted offers

• Not ranking the subscriber based on how warm they are

Someone who consistently clicks the gut-health content is telling you something. Someone who clicks the energy stuff every time is telling you something else. Over a handful of emails, you’re not looking at one undifferentiated list anymore.

You’re looking at several groups of people, each one waving a flag that says “this is my specific problem.”

Once you know that, “book a call” stops being the only invitation in your toolkit.

You can send the gut-health group a case study about someone exactly like them. You can send the energy group a different one. The ask gets narrower and, paradoxically, gets more calls booked because it finally sounds like it was written for the person reading it.

Because it was.

The other thing I see constantly: a coach with a big list (think: more than 5 figures) and zero tags on any of it. No idea who’s who. Every email a generic broadcast into a crowd that happens to share an inbox provider.

Then the frustration when nobody books a call.

“There are all these leads in the pipeline - why don’t they book?”

The coach blames the email copy.

Wrong.

They don’t book the call because you’re making a completely generic invitation. Like being in a festival and shouting into a crowd of strangers, “let’s go watch a different stage!”

No one thinks you’re talking directly to them - so they ignore you.

What to do next:

No rebuild needed on these tasks.

1. Look at your best-performing lead magnet. Once someone finishes it - what problem are they left with? If you can’t answer that, start there before you do anything else.

2. Look at the last few broadcasts you sent. Which links did people click? If you don’t know, you have a data problem. That’s the reason your book a call emails keep landing on deaf ears.

Fix the first issue, and your lead magnet actually starts supporting your offer. Fix the second, and your list goes from a crowd to a room of people you know something about.

Diagnose and sort on the way onto the list - and keep diagnosing while they stay there.

This is the difference between coaches that get results with email and those that think it’s a waste of time.

If that sounds like a lot to figure out alone…

We help coaches turn their email list into a profit centre in their business - and for the first time in years, my free call calendar link is back on.

Before you book a chat with me about your emails, a quick check that you should have:

• Dedicated email software

• A clear idea of how some of the people got onto your list

These things matter because it tells me you’ve at least tried making email marketing a core part of your business. It also means we can do our job properly, and we’re not dealing with hypotheticals.

Speak soon.

It’s easy to assume everyone we sell to thinks like we do about investing in their health and fitness.

But these are 5 common mistakes I see coaches making over and over again, that keep them from building the business they want.

Mistake #1: Assuming people with a problem want to solve it

This is a tough pill for any business owner to swallow - but especially coaches - because they’re so proactive and decisive about attacking a problem once they realise they’ve got it…

But it’s not enough to have a problem. They have to actually want to solve their problem. That’s about readiness - not problems.

I was chatting to a coach recently, who felt pulled towards helping people with addictions get into the gym and use training - instead of substances - as a way to blow off steam.

He’s not the first one.

Over the years, quite a few coaches have come to me - wanting to support this group of people, and my answer is always the same.

Don’t assume that just because they have a problem, they’re ready to solve it.

They’ve got to be ready for the solution.

We shouldn’t cast our pearls before swine.

Mistake #2: Selling them what you want to sell, not what they want to buy

Coaches hit a wall with coaching where they eventually want to stop talking about diet and exercise and start wanting to talk about something else.

• Values alignment.

• Scaling a business.

• Mindset and personal development.

Whatever it is - this isn’t the thing the prospect wants YOU to help them with.

They connect you with health and fitness.

And even though talking about it in your marketing makes you want to set yourself on fire…

You can only repackage what they actually NEED once they’ve bought from you.

If you’re not up for doing that, over and over and over again…

That’s when you hire a marketer to help you repeat the same message in new and creative ways.

Mistake #3: Underpricing yourself because you under-invest in your business

There’s a range of tolerable comfort for YOU as a coach investing in your coaching business.

Marketing, sales commissions, accounting, etc - you have a budget in mind for what feels “reasonable” to you.

You base your prices on what you’ll buy at.

But that keeps you stuck at a price point you’ve outgrown.

Price is only an issue in the absence of value - invest more, to normalise the amount you want to charge.

I learned that years ago from Dan Meredith and it was a huge shift in thinking for me - thanks Dan (he has a free group here - recommend checking that out).

Mistake #4: You sell the process, not the outcome

Telling a prospect they get check-ins, and training plans, and a food diary review… and the parts of the coaching process…

Rather than painting the picture for them about what their life is about to become.

Put more time and effort into this, rather than the deliverables.

• Define the outcome - make the transformation vivid

• Define the person - you’ll have to exclude people

• Define the timeline they can expect results in

• Define your unique approach to doing the work

The outcome is what matters to your followers - help them to imagine themselves in that future.

Mistake #5: Using generic AI to make your offer

AI is a great resource, but it can’t replace your coaching instinct.

It’s just a tool - like a laptop, or a barbell.

When you use ChatGPT to develop the offer, you’re going to end up sounding like every other coach out there who’s doing the same thing.

You can use AI as a sounding board (CathAI is great for that because it pushes back and challenges you), but it has to be your wisdom that designs the offer.

That’s your market intuition, paired with what you’re excited to deliver.

When you have taste and discernment - paired with CathAI - you’re cruising.

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I have a part of my brain missing.

I know that sounds like the start of a joke… But it’s true.

It’s one of the reasons why my memory is so bad - along with ripping ADHD…

So I live and die by the systems and safety nets I’ve created that allow me to keep as little in my brain as possible.

Today, I’m going to tell you about one of those systems - because I feel sure that it will help you get more clients from your followers…

And it’s actually got nothing to do with marketing!

Step 1: Capture

12:01am every day, an automation opens a fresh note on my iPhone.

You don’t have to automate that - but when I didn’t, I just forgot to do it.

I do mine in a folder called Stream of Consciousness - and if you wanted to, you can pre-load it with anything you want to track:

Step 2: Log what’s important

Anything you’re actively tracking gets filled out.

There have been times I’ve tracked my goals, workouts, temperature in the room when I go to sleep, medication taken, sleep scores, weight, revenue.

If it’s important, measure it daily.

My setup looks like this:

Step 3: Voicenote throughout the day

I know a lot of coaches struggle with typing long entries. I’ve found that Wispr Flow is a great app that transcribes your voice very faithfully.

You can get a free month here.

If you’re anti-AI, or you have the kind of accent that iPhone picks up easily, you can also use this button on your keypad:

The best entries for me are those that record anything that enriches my life. If I want to remember it later…

• Beautiful morning light

• Feeling peaceful and happy

• A productive workblock where I was in flow

As well as important details around client work, projects, revenue - whatever.

I make NO separation here between work life and personal life.

It all gets logged the exact same.

The Saturday Review

Every week, on a Saturday, I have a recurring reminder:

What this means in practice:

• Copy & paste everything from Apple Notes into one massive Google doc. I use the tabs for the current week and every month of the year. We’re only half way through the year and it’s already sitting at 16K words!

• Save the week tab as a .txt file, and give it to your AI.

• Use AI to interrogate your ledger for what you want more of…

Here are some questions you can snag right now and use immediately:

1. Where was I at my best this week?

2. What circumstances created the happiest version of me?

3. Where’s the bottleneck on my joy?

4. Where did I spend time doing stuff I didn’t want to do?

5. What did I repeatedly complain about?

You can design the next week with these things in mind.

You can see incredible patterns over weeks, months and quarters.

I’m now able to look back on this time last year when I was doing it, and find myself much happier, more willing to have hard conversations, and clear on what I’m actually optimising for.

(Quiet mornings, more poetry, more movement, and a tightly regulated environment.)

The whole point of the AI is to amalgamate an unreasonable amount of data, and design your life around the patterns you otherwise would miss.

Example Workflow:

Monday: logs weight, one voice note about a stressful client call

Wednesday: voice note about a walk that felt good, logs no complaints

Friday: three voice notes, all mentioning being “behind” - pattern starting to show

Saturday prompt run reveals: the “behind” feeling clusters around one specific task type (e.g., always after admin-heavy days, never after client-facing days)

Action taken the following week: batch the admin, protect the client-facing time

A Caveat

In truth, I run a WAY more detailed process than this.

For example, once a month I distil my top 10-20 lessons from the month before and often use it to shape business policies.

I do big life lessons, like this:

And tactical business lessons, like this:

There are actually 30 lessons just from June and any one of them could be a high-signal piece of content, an article, a podcast, an email etc.

This is a level of obsession most people don’t want in their life.

This is a huge amount of data from the sheer volume of real-time observations you have about your life, with the way your business is right now.

Maybe this is less about “more clients” and closer to “more aligned work”.

Take what serves you, leave the rest.

They’re more open to being mentored and coached than any other industry I’ve worked in. They’re decisive and ready to invest in their own education. They genuinely do want to be better business owners.

But that can be a huge disadvantage too…

Because when someone’s handing you a playbook, saying, “here, do it this way, this works…”

And it DOES work…

It’s very hard to let go of that.

It’s easy to abandon things that don’t work - but strategies, and advice that pays the bills…?

That can become golden handcuffs.

Luckily, I hit that point pretty early in my coaching career.

I’d recently moved my business online, and my first ever mentor told me to sell on sales calls.

Long story short…

After countless hours of having to lie on the dark, non-verbal…

I started to realise this wasn’t a good fit for my disposition.

I could do it.

But it had a huge personal cost.

So I started to look for another way.

(There’s ALWAYS another way - that’s more aligned, by the way…)

I realised there were really only 4 things I needed to have in place to run my coaching business…

And if I wanted to, I could change one, some or all of them to better suit myself.

The norm at the time was:

Step 1: Post on instagram so people could see how good you looked. Make them feel bad that they weren’t as in shape as you.

Step 2: Get them to book a call. Pressure them if you have to.

Step 3: Take card details over the phone - and under no circumstances let them leave without paying. “If you let them leave, you let them down.”

Step 4: Fulfil the coaching services online, with check-ins on a Monday, where you give feedback via Loom or Zoom.

I LOATHED every part of this.

But I started to see the pattern underneath it all…

And what you actually needed to build a business.

#1: A way for people to find you

Instead of posting thirst trap content on instagram, you could…

• Run ads

• Post thoughtful written posts

• Use other social media platforms

• Partner with people who already had your audience

• Go to networking events

• Launch a podcast

The goal isn’t “post on instagram”.

It’s “get found” - and there’s WAY more ways to do that.

#2: A way for them to understand what you to & how you can help them

Instead of pressuring them to book a call and making them feel stupid for not working with you, you could…

• Be transparent about the work you do behind the scenes

• Use a soft call to action, instead of a direct one

• Invite people to hang virtually, like a webinar

• Invite people to hang in real life

• Share social proof and stories

My goal was never speed to get them to pay. My goal was always to make them so eager to work together that the sale was a done deal.

It was like edging, for sales lol.

#3: A way for them to pay you

Instead of a hostage situation while they get their credit card sorted… You could…

• Low ticket offer done at scale

• Mid ticket price with a long term commitment

• Super high ticket with a shorter time frame and only work with 1 person at a time

• Only accepting a suitcase full of non-sequential bills via a dead drop in the park (just kidding)

The goal here is to ask for enough that they have some skin in the game, and you don’t resent the work.

#4: A way for you to provide the services

Instead of a 1:1 zoom call that filled your calendar, you could…

• Do group calls

• Only communicate async via WhatsApp

• Only coach via voicenotes, with no laptop time at all

• Coach in person, once a month, for an immersive 24-hours

The goal on services is to build a business that YOU actually like. Not one that the clients ask for, not one that suits them… but one that doesn’t burn you out.

There are tons of ways to run a business.

You don’t have to do it that way, because that’s “how it’s done”.

You can do it that way for a season, and then change your mind and try something else.

Everything works. It’s about finding a way that works for you.

Every coach I know can describe their dream client.

Age, income, pain point. The language they use in their DMs.

…right down to their coffee order.

We’ve all done the worksheet.

But there’s a better exercise.

One that no-one teaches.

The ICP Shadow.

And your reaction to the ICP Shadow is so… visceral, it’s an incredibly potent exercise…

In Jungian psychology, the shadow self isn't “the bad version” of you.

It's the part you've actively disowned.

The thing you'd never consciously identify with, but that exists in you as a potential all the same.

It follows you around like a shadow because you won't look at it directly.

And your ICP (ideal client profile) has one too.

Yesterday, I was part of a workshop - Mavericks 90 - and I posed the question:

“Who would you never in a million years want to work with?”

Not just the opposite of your ICP - the disowned version of them. Their Shadow.

3-5 words - don’t overthink it. Just name the traits.

Top of my list:

Exploitative.

I cannot fuck with exploitative people.

Manipulative & cruel for their own gain.

Once I’d named it, I realised it wasn’t just a personality trait.

It was more like a moral line in the sand that I would never cross.

My whole business - and our philosophy - is based around never doing anything that could even remotely resemble exploitation.

• I won’t accept payments on a credit card if they can’t afford it.

• I won’t let people spend more than they can manage.

• I won’t offer a service that’s more than the coach needs.

• I won’t sell at all if I’m not sure I can help them.

The ICP Shadow reveals a version of me that I most fear becoming.

Someone who’ll high-pressure sell, amplify pain, make people feel hopeless, and position myself as their saviour.

That idea is revolting to me.

It’s also absolutely possible that the need to make sales and “acquire customers” can make us lose sight of these values.

Give the shadow a face

The exercise goes further than just listing qualities.

You give that composite of everything you despise an actual identity.

• A shitty ex.

• A bad mentor.

• The teacher who made you feel small.

• A fictional villain, if you’d rather keep it impersonal.

They become a character you can hold in your head, not an abstract concept you forget about by Thursday.

Your “who I’m for” statement does almost no work on its own.

Everyone wants “ambitious, growth-minded, ready to invest in themselves.”

For coaches, that would look like: “decisive, a self-starter, ready to commit.”

It doesn’t really repel anyone.

Because - deep down - coaches don’t REALLY want to repel anyone.

But if they did…

That would read SO much stronger.

What makes the right people lean in is knowing exactly what you stand against.

But - like, really.

In a “I do not fuck with that kind of person” way.

The shadow is what makes that legible. Someone your audience can clock immediately, because they’ve met them too.

The line you never cross

Once you’ve named the shadow, the next move is tactical: write the sentence that describes what you will never do to your clients, your audience, your business.

Not your values, that’s too vague. Write the actual line - and you’ll almost definitely be thinking of specific people you’re positioning against.

It’s what comes to mind when you think…

“We NEVER do that here.”

For us:

We don’t twist the knife. We don’t make people feel worse than they did before they spoke to us. We don’t manufacture urgency we don’t believe in. We don’t sell people something they don’t need because the close was good.

Fill in your own and make it specific enough that you could point to a real moment where someone else crossed it and you didn’t.

That one sentence will do more for your marketing than a wall of “our values” ever will, because it’s falsifiable.

People can tell when a coach actually lives by a line versus when it’s just talk. Authenticity and integrity mean nothing because no one would ever claim they stand for the opposite.

The shadow keeps us honest. This is a promise you make to yourself - and have been making your whole career.

This is miles better than an ICP worksheet

Every piece of content you write, every offer you build, every email you send - you can run it against two characters now.

The person you’re trying to become

The shadow you refuse to be.

It’s far easier to know with total clarity what you don’t want to attract than it is to hold a perfect, fully-formed picture of your ideal client in your head every time you sit down to write.

The shadow is concrete. Your reaction to them is visceral - you feel it in your body.

Your ICP doesn’t quite feel like a real person…

But you know exactly what the exploitative, dishonest, corner-cutting, shit-house, version of your industry looks like, because you’ve met them, or worked for them, or watched a client get burned by them.

The shadow defines who you won’t work with - but also - who you won’t become. Not at any price.

Write from that place, and the right people will recognise themselves in what’s left.

Try it for yourself:

• List 3-5 words for your ICP’s Shadow self.

• Give them a face - or a name.

• Write 1 sentence: “We never do that here” that you could defend with your whole chest.

See how much clearer marketing feels immediately.

Today, I’m going to show you how I think about them…

Because it’ll work to help you solve your problems too.

And it’s so simple to start - all you’ll need is a notebook, and a pen.

NOT your computer, phone, or laptop.

Coaches don't need more followers. You need better marketing to the ones already watching. Follower to Client delivers weekly insights, paired with proven frameworks, swipes and templates from inside the fitness coaching businesses we write for so you can convert your warm audience… without cold outreach, ad spend, or going viral.

Let me show you the most recent example of a problem I solved:

PART 1: Name the problem

We use an opt-in trial.

Meaning: CathAI doesn’t need anyone to give their email address, phone number, or card details to start a trial.

This is a problem because…

1. I can’t welcome anyone

2. I don’t know who’s trying us out

3. I can’t help anyone if they get stuck

4. I can’t make them an offer if they don’t choose to buy

5. I can’t upsell or downsell them anything, or customise their experience outside the app

…You might think:

This is shit.

Just make them give you their card details first.

But CathAI is great, and I wanted to remove friction for people to try it out.

We’re optimising for trial starts.

I just wish I had their email, so that I could send them some resources to make money quickly.

Here’s how to write about it:

Your opening sentence starts with…

“I need to…”

Say it as plain as you can.

In this early version of this practice, I noted that solving ONE problem would sometimes solve a whole bunch of others - if you picked the right problem:

For coaches, that might look like…

“I need to find a way to help clients with alcohol during the summer.”

PART 2: Braindump some solutions

The goal here isn’t to pick THE solution.

Just write down what you’ve considered doing.

Everything you’ve considered. The goal is volume.

ALL the ways you could solve this problem.

I like to start these sentences to show the possibility, not to make any commitments (I don’t know, it just helps me be creative).

Start these sentences with:

“I could…”

And write as many as you can think of.

PART 3: Pick one and outline the steps involved

Sometimes (in fact, a lot of the time) you won’t know which idea is best. It won’t be obvious at all.

So you might want to write a little pro’s and con’s list next to each sentence.

If that happens, you’ll want to remember what you’re optimising for.

For example:

Don’t get caught up in getting good data if the goal is revenue.

I find it really hard to know what order to do things in…

So I list out all the “parts” I need in place…

And then figure out what order to make them in afterwards (I often get this part wrong for some reason).

For example, I’ll try to update the source documentation before the emails are written - stuff like that.

PART 4: Note any on-going questions

You don’t always know the questions and open loops until you start making stuff.

I reckon if you did, it would stop you from ever getting started.

So I like to keep a running list of “how-do-I’s” at the bottom.

I come back to them later, when I understand more about the process IF they’re important.

Bonus:

Every week, make a release log.

Everything you’ve done, and learned that week.

All the problems you solved.

For coaches - this could look like changes you make to your approach for check-ins during the summer (“we’re switching to a voicenote check-in, so you spend less time at your computer and more time on your walk while it’s sunny!”)

Apart from being a great piece of content that shows how committed you are to an excellent product…

It also reminds you of the scale of the problems you’ve overcome and helps you build confidence in your abilities.

Boom!

That’s it.

That’s the process I’ve used as a non-technical person to solve all the tech issues I’ve faced since having an AI product.

If you want to check out CathAI - you can read more here.

Or if you just want to follow along for the behind the scenes, come follow me on Instagram. I’m very transparent about everything I’m learning.

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Coaches who are running ads to attract followers might as well set their money on fire. It makes zero sense to me.

And in this week’s edition of Follower To Client, we’re gonna talk a little bit about that.

Over the last few years, we’ve been called into a particular type of coaching business more times than I can count.

You’d recognise them immediately. Huge reach. Millions of impressions. Follower counts that make other coaches genuinely envious. The kind of numbers that look like someone has completely figured it out.

And then you see the revenue.

The empty sales calendars.

The bounced subscriptions on Stripe they never seem to anticipate…

And you think:

This business model is fucking hanging.

These kinds of businesses are almost never proportionate to the size of the audience. Sometimes it’s surprisingly small for the scale of attention they’re commanding.

When we look at the content, the reason is almost always the same.

Everything being published is designed to reach new people. Top of funnel, all day, every day. Broad appeal. High shareability. The kind of content that gets saves and shares and nice comments from people who will never, ever buy.

Nobody in the audience has ever been given a reason to. They’ve been entertained, educated, maybe even inspired… but nobody has ever spoken directly to them as someone who might want to invest in coaching.

A lot of the time, no one even replies to the DMs!

Years of reach.

The level of audience attention that would once have been reserved for world leaders…

But generation a fraction of the revenue it could be.

Why do agencies encourage follow ads?

Because they’re cheap as fuck.

They’re also worth almost nothing once you have them.

This isn’t just a fitness coaching problem, but it’s particularly brutal in fitness because the content that goes viral in this space (memes, workout clips, low-calorie high-protein recipes, entertainment) tends to attract the widest possible audience.

And wide doesn’t mean ready to buy.

Think about a personal finance creator. She can spend years producing content about budgeting, saving, getting out of debt. Hundreds of thousands of followers. Everyone loves her. Engagement is strong.

Or she can produce content specifically for first-generation self-employed ex-pats with six-figure salaries who want financial freedom before they’re 50. Smaller audience. Way more specific. The people who find her feel like she’s reading their diary.

In this case, follower value is WAY more valuable.

One audience is passively consuming. The other is almost certainly going to buy something at some point, because the content speaks directly to a felt problem they have money to solve.

The fitness coaching version of this is coaches who have built a following on their physique, their training content, their meal prep videos.

Great reach. Wrong room.

The people who follow you for your meal prep are not the same people who will pay you to coach them.

They might overlap, but most of them won’t. They’re there for the free content, and they’ll keep being there for the free content, because nothing in your marketing has ever suggested there’s anything else on offer.

Follower count is a vanity metric when it’s disconnected from buyer intent.

Follower value is what tells you whether your audience is actually an asset.

The simple version of follower value is this:

Take the revenue your social media audience generates in a year and divide it by the number of followers you have.

That’s your number.

Most coaches have never done this calculation. When they do, one of two things happens.

Either they realise their number is surprisingly strong. They have a small, warm, highly commercial audience and they’ve been underestimating it.

Or they realise their number is surprisingly low, and the reason is usually that their content has been optimised for top of funnel reach rather than relationship.

Still useful to know, because if you’re in that second camp…

You can course correct and get into the first.

Here’s how you get started with that…

Use this week’s gift: The Follower Value Calculator

A prompt to help you work out what your followers are actually worth, and identify the most likely reason the number is where it is.

Paste this into Claude or ChatGPT. Rough numbers are fine - have them handy, you don’t need to be laser precise.

The Follower Value Prompt

I want to work out the commercial value of my social media audience and understand what’s affecting it. I’ll answer your questions one at a time.

Question 1: How many followers do you have on your primary platform?

Question 2: What was your approximate total revenue in the last 12 months from clients who originally found you through social media? (Rough estimate is fine.)

Question 3: What types of content do you publish most frequently? (e.g. training videos, transformation posts, educational talking heads, personal content, meal prep, etc.)

Question 4: When someone finds your content and visits your profile, what’s the clearest signal that you’re a coach who takes on paying clients?

Question 5: When did you last publish something that was specifically designed to speak to someone who is ready to invest in coaching, rather than someone who’s just interested in fitness?

Question 6: What’s your most common starting point for a new client? (e.g. they DM you after a post, they book a call from your bio link, they’ve been following you for months and eventually reach out, etc.)

Question 7: Have you ever had a client tell you which specific piece of content made them decide to reach out?

Once you’ve answered all seven, ask: “Based on my answers, what’s the most likely reason my follower value is where it is, and what’s one thing I could change in my content this week to start improving it?”

If you’ve used Claude Cowork, you can ask it to look through and audit your social media and measure it against these questions.

A big audience and a warm audience are not the same thing.

There’s a reason your marketing feels hard to write.

The thing you’re trying to say is personal… and you’re REALLY close to it.

Personal things are the hardest to put into words without feeling exposed or self-indulgent.

Like you’re making your marketing about you when it should be about them.

Your most compelling marketing isn’t just about your way of doing things.

But WHY you still do them that way now.

That’s way more than your frameworks…

Certifications and qualifications…

Client transformation photoshoots and testimonials…

Think about why you actually became a coach.

That experience you had…

Maybe the way you were made to feel…

The wilderness years, when you spent doing everything right and feeling like something was STILL missing.

Those experiences are your marketing.

And your ability to connect with your audience is directly linked to how honest and real you can be about that stuff.

RAWNESS.

Somewhere out there is a person who is exactly where you were.

They’re looking for someone who already understands - without them needing to explain themselves - what it actually feels like to be them day to day.

I built Kind Copy because I needed someone to tell me the truth without making me feel stupid or blindsided or managed.

That need came from a very specific, very personal place - and for a long time I thought it was too personal to talk about - too much about me.

What I’ve learned is the opposite.

The more specific the origin, the more universal the resonance.

Your clients don’t need you to be objective.

They need you to be the person who gets it… who got it before they did, who found a way through, and who built something specifically for people like them.

So the question isn’t: what should I post about this week?

The question is: WHY did I build this in this way?

Answer that honestly, and you won’t struggle to find things to say.

You’ll have more than you can use.

Everything you create from that place will carry a weight that no hook formula can manufacture.

You already know what your clients need.

You lived it. That’s why you’re here.

And it’ll feel like a shortcut the next time you’re looking to connect with a follower and turn them into a client.

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They’re just reactive & lack pause.

In May I made 3 decisions that could have gone badly wrong.

They didn’t - not because I’m any kind of business whizz - but because I used the same decision making process each time…

And when I looked back on it - it’s a framework.

And THEN I realised…

This process is almost exactly what health and fitness coaches teach their clients…

Let’s get into it:

Step 1: NOTICE the impulse.

What is the thing you want to do right now, in this moment, from this emotional state?

From a coaching perspective, this might be to snack, to skip a workout etc… But from a business perspective, this looked like:

• Fix it.

• Chase it.

• Defend yourself.

• Intervene.

Step 2: NAME why acting on it doesn’t serve you.

Not “is the impulse wrong” - In my experience, it usually isn’t…

But: what does acting on this cost me at scale?

In coaching, this might be “If I have this sweet treat now, it might not matter, but if I was almost at goal, it could really mess things up!”

In business, that looked like:

• If I chase every failed payment, I don’t have a product.

• If I rebuild in a panic, I might make it worse.

• If I keep reading this content, I keep my focus off what I’m building.

(“At scale” turned out to be a really important part of the thinking because you can do a lot of stupid shit yourself at a smaller level - but if I had 100X the users, clients or customers, it wouldn’t be realistic.)

Step 3: CHOOSE your response.

The goal here is to serve the version of you building something deliberately.

Not the version of you that wants to feel better today, but the version of you that wants this to work long term.

At the scale and size you’re planning on building to.

In my experience, health and fitness coaches are able to think long term about training and nutrition, but struggle to think long term when it comes to their business.

The 3 decisions I made this way in May:

1. I didn’t intervene when a subscriber’s payment failed for CathAI. It was the first time it had happened - and the first time I let the dunning emails do their job. before May, I didn't even know how to set up dunning emails - huge result!

2. I realiseed I’d messed up the trial architecture - giving new trialists 1000 messages not 100. This was a Stripe issue and I’m kinda scared of messing with Stripe, so I didn’t try to fix it in a panic. I chalked it up to acquisition costs and made a better quality decision after sleeping on it.

3. I muted the person whose criticism was taking up mental real estate it hadn’t earned. And I stopped checking the account.

None of these were big dramatic things.

Notice. Name. Choose.

Exactly the way you would on a diet!

The framework doesn’t make the decision feel easier… But it does slow you down long enough to make the right strategic call.

Hope this helps!

When a client steps away from Kind Copy, we don’t just wish them well and close the thread.

We run a review.

We do it because maintaining a genuinely high standard of work needs someone actually checking we haven’t drifted away from great quality.

In a small team, that’s us.

So we hold each other accountable.

The questions we ask ourselves aren’t particularly dramatic.

1. Did we do what we said we’d do?

2. Did we communicate clearly?

3. Was the work good?

4. Were there any moments where we dropped the ball and if so, did we catch them in time?

5. Is there anything we’d handle differently next time?

Honestly, 99% of the time, the review confirms what we already knew:

The work was solid, the relationship ended on good terms, and whatever caused the exit had nothing to do with the quality of what we delivered.

That’s not arrogance. It’s just that most client exits aren’t about failure. They’re about timing, budget, life, priorities shifting. They happen to everyone.

But running the review means we know that.

And any clients leaving doesn’t fester into a story we tell ourselves about what we did wrong.

That’s how this started.

But there’s actually a secondary benefit that we didn’t plan for when we started doing this, and it turned out to be just as valuable…

Every client relationship contains proof.

Results. Decisions. Transformations. Moments where something shifted. Data that took months to accumulate.

And all of it starts to blur the moment the relationship ends, because your attention moves forward.

(That’s a nice way of saying my memory sucks lol)

If you don’t capture it while it’s still fresh, you lose it.

At least, you lose enough of it to make the case study thinner than it should be, and the story harder to tell.

The exit review catches it before it goes.

I’ve been thinking about how useful this practice would be for coaches specifically, because the emotional stakes of a client exit are so much higher in coaching than in most service businesses.

When someone steps away from a coaching relationship… whether they’ve hit their goal, changed their mind, or just run out of steam…

Part of you always wonders… could I have done more?

Did I help them well enough?

Basically: Did I drop the ball?

I remember it from when I was a coach.

It matters to us that we do a good job, and when we part ways - we need to be sure we did everything we can and acted with integrity.

And when I was a coach… I didn’t create a way to actually check.

So that question didn’t go away.

I carried it with me, with every new client that left.

So I’ve adapted the review we use at Kind Copy for OUR clients into something coaches can run through when a client graduates from their programme - or steps away before they get there.

It’s designed to do 3 things:

1. Absolve you of any misplaced sense of responsibility. Not every exit is a failure. Running the review proves it, one way or the other, so you’re working with facts rather than feeling.

2. Create a quick feedback loop. If something did slip - a communication, a missed signal, a point where the client needed something different - catching it now means it improves your next relationship. Extreme ownership.

3. Capture the story while it’s still fresh. The transformation data, the turning points, the thing they said in week 6 that told you everything was clicking - those patterns are marketing material. It’s proof.

…But it disappears faster than you think.

The prompt below is designed to be used with an AI.

Paste it into ChatGPT, Claude (or CathAI if you’re fancy), and it’ll interview you one question at a time, then write up your answers as both an internal reflection record and an external case study you can actually use.

It takes about 20-30 minutes.

The case study it produces will outlast the client's exit by years.

Subscribe now

Click here to grab the resource

You built something last week that solved a client’s problem.

A template.

A framework.

A voice note that finally made macros click for someone who’d been confused for months.

A checklist that got a client through meal prep Sunday without losing the will to live.

You sent it. It helped them - good.

But you moved on.

Coaches solve valuable problems every single day - in their DMs, on their check-in calls, in their own heads when they figure out how to explain something in a way that really clicks for a client.

But then they just... move on to the next problem.

The resource gets buried in a Google Drive folder. The voice note disappears. The template gets used once and forgotten.

Meanwhile, the same coach is sitting at their desk on a Tuesday thinking: I need to create more content. I need something to offer. I need a lead magnet.

You already have so much.

Think about everything you’ve built in the last 12 months of coaching:

Weekly meal plan templates.

Training splits.

Grocery lists.

A “back on track” protocol you’ve sent to a dozen clients who fell off after a holiday.

A checklist for eating out without derailing progress.

A Loom explaining progressive overload that you’ve basically recorded 40 times because you keep having the same conversation.

All of that is an asset.

Every single thing on that list could be packaged, named, and offered - either for free to warm up your audience, or for a small amount of money to someone who’s not yet a client but is definitely in your orbit.

Free to clients. Paid to followers.

Once you’ve helped someone solve even a small problem, the conversation about working together long-term is a completely different one.

You’re not a stranger anymore. The trust is already there.

What a micro offer actually is (and isn’t)

A micro offer is not a watered-down version of your coaching package.

It’s a focused solution to one specific problem that’s PART of what your coaching helps with… priced low enough that it’s an impulse buy.

The point isn’t primarily the revenue (though that’s nice). The point is that someone who pays you, even a small amount, has crossed a line. They’re a buyer now.

Selling to an existing buyer has a success rate of 60–70%, compared to 3–20% for a cold prospect.

By the time someone finishes your micro offer, they should be a better prospect for your main coaching package.

You’ve solved one of the small bottlenecks they get hung up on.

How to find yours

Open your phone. Your notes app. Your camera roll. Your saved posts. Your DMs.

You’re looking for:

• A method or framework you use regularly that gets results

• A question you get asked all the time

• A piece of content that performed better than you expected

• A voice note or check-in that explains something really clearly

• A client win (even a small one) that came from something repeatable you did

Write down 3 things. Those are your raw materials.

Then ask yourself: If someone paid me to solve just this one thing, what would that look like?

What’s the specific problem it solves? Who has that problem? What does it include? What result do they get, and how long does it take?

One outcome only. Give it a cool name that sounds like it solves the problem. Put a payment link on it. Done.

The idea isn’t that you give them your whole coaching offer as a “light” version, but that you give them one part of the problem 100% solved:

You probably have versions of all of these micro offers in your Google drive right now.

You just haven’t put them in front of the right people for a while.

Here’s how:

1. Hand raisers - these get people to identify if they have the problem you can help with. Looks like: "Drop a 👋 if you've ever done everything right for three weeks and then completely lost momentum." This isn’t about selling them - just identifying them.

2. The 2 Step Follow-up - specific, low barrier, sent straight to the people that responded: "I've been working on something that's going to help with exactly that - the week 3 wall. If you want me to send it over, comment [keyword] / hit the sticker / whatever."

It’s elegant because there’s NO big fanfare, no sales page, no funnel - just “hey, I made this to help people like you with problems like this. Want it?”

I love it.

Anyway, I actually use this myself all the time…

So I have a shitload of ideas you can grab if you’re looking for inspiration.

To grab this list DM me the word “LIST” on instagram.

I’ll send you over a big ass list.

“I will write your social media content to build your authority on Instagram.”

That was the whole offer.

It was called the dirty dozen - because it was only 12 posts.

It grew crazy fast because people could see it was working.

I was getting good results in one specific place.

NOT being all things to everyone.

These days, social media is probably the smallest part of what we do in terms of ROI for clients.

But it was the thing that got us known. The narrow lane built the wider road.

I was reminded of this recently when a copywriter I’d hired for some freelance work was asked to give a talk on Meta ads for travel agents.

He sent me a DM about it - questioning if he should say yes to the opportunity.

The brief he received was enormous.

Explain what Meta ads are, how they work, how to build campaigns, what pricing and reach mean, ads vs boosted posts, how to know if they’re right for your business, what investment will make a difference…

It was basically: explain everything.

Insane.

He knows his stuff.

But nobody walks away from a talk like that having actually learned something actionable.

It’s WAY too much, way too broad.

The audience leaves overwhelmed, with no idea what to do first. We were gonna do something different…

Control the frame on what you’re there to answer

Not “Meta ads for travel agents”.

That’s a whole universe of content.

Instead, we were going to define and constrain the frame:

“How to set up a lead form ad for travel agents in Q3 so you can build your first campaign, keep control of your spending, and get more qualified leads, even if you don’t have a media buyer in your team.

We’ll talk about the key metrics that matter… and what’s a distraction…

You’ll also learn the 3 types of creatives that go into every test - so get your phones ready, because I’ll show you a QR code you can scan to grab my 5 best performing scripts right to your inbox!”

Same expertise.

But a completely different level of confidence.

Suddenly there’s a person in the room. There’s a problem. There’s an outcome.

And he doesn’t have to be an authority on all of Meta ads - which is crazy overwhelming for them and him…

He just has to know this part really, really well.

Which he does.

Here’s the framework… it works for any speaking opportunity.

1. Define the one question you’re there to answer.

Not the topic. The question.

Make it specific enough that someone in your audience can put their hand up and say that’s me.

If your title could apply to everyone, it’ll land with no one.

2. Tell them what they’ll learn and what’s a distraction.

This is underrated.

Giving your audience permission to stop worrying about everything else is an act of massive authority because you’ve immediately taken control of the talk.

“We’re not covering X today” is almost as valuable as what you are covering, because it defines the hard boundaries of what you’ll talk about.

This is more important if you’re less confident about going off plan because it stops people from asking questions about stuff that’s not what you’re prepared to cover.

3. Always create a live offer moment.

This is where most people leave money (and list growth) on the table.

You’ve got a room full of people who are engaged, who trust you enough to be there, and then… the talk ends and everyone goes home.

You’re hoping someone looks you up on Instagram (after a full day of speakers) and reaches out.

Don’t let that happen.

• A QR code that goes to your five best scripts.

• A ManyChat keyword that triggers a download right there in the room.

• A simple landing page with the one resource that goes deeper on what you just taught.

Something they can grab right now, while you’re still in the room with them.

The photo on stage is useful as an authority signal… but it disappears from people’s feeds in 48 hours.

The email address stays & gives you countless opportunities.

I wrote about this a bit more in this article:

4. Say yes to the opportunities you’re given, not the ones you wish you’d been given.

This writer would have much preferred to give a talk about SEO for car dealerships… but this was the opportunity he got.

But inside the overwhelming brief he was given was a talk he could absolutely give.

One that was specific, valuable and actionable…

As long as he was willing to reframe it.

Most coaches I know do this too.

They get asked to speak in a community, on a podcast, at an event, and they either say no because they don’t feel like the expert, or they say yes and try to cover everything and dilute the whole thing.

You don’t need to be the definitive authority on a topic.

You need to own one specific answer to one specific question really well.

That’s how Kind Copy started. One thing. Done well. For the right people.

The rest followed.

The hardest part of this isn’t understanding the framework…

It’s applying it when you’re staring at a vague brief and trying to figure out what your specific question actually is.

That’s exactly the kind of thinking CathAI is built for.

Not to give you a generic talk outline, but to help you find the angle that’s true to what you actually know.

If you’ve got a talk booked, and you’d like to take it for a test drive…

You can start a free 7-day trial now.

There’s a clip of Guru from Gang Starr getting interviewed at the start of You Know My Steez…

“That makes me know that what ‘re doing… we had the right idea in the beginning. And we just need to maintain our focus, and elevate… what we do, we update our formulas…

We have certain formulas, but we update ‘em with the times and everything, y’know?

So the rhyme style is elevated, the style of beats is elevated, but it’s still Guru & Premier - and there’s always a message involved.”

If you don’t know the song - I’ll link it at the end of this post.

There are probably only 25 stories - your formulas - you’ll tell over and over again as a coach.

The narrative spine that taught you lessons so strong that you actually built your whole philosophy around them.

But for many coaches, they feel like they rely on 2 kinds of stories…

1. Those which are very new - often partially borrowed from people whose content you consume now…

The Hormozi / Gary Vee / Jocko style content, which resonates with you… but is too advanced for the people you’re coaching…

So it doesn’t attract them.

2. Or the very old, dating back to the start of the journey, which has probably stopped resonating with you - but always bangs whenever you put it out.

Creating this content probably bores you, because you’re past it… and it keeps you feeling stuck, serving clients you want to outgrow.

I had a conversation with a coach yesterday who I absolutely adore. I think she’s exceptional at what she does. And she told me…

“I’m sitting on a goldmine of stories I’ve stopped telling.”

That’s what I call The Good Chapter Problem.

In practice, coaches haven’t run out of stories, but they’re in a chapter of their lives now where things are actually pretty good.

They’ve solved a lot of those early problems.

But the struggle chapters from the early days have a sort of legitimacy. They’re raw, scrappy, and have an underdog energy.

And the “good times” kinda feel like showing off… or that you have nothing left to teach.

And that can feel like you’re telling the same 3 stories over and over again - that are YEARS old.

So your audience are missing the bridge.

They resonate with your early struggle… that’s good.

They might see or sense your current success… that’s good, too.

But they’re missing the bridge that gets them there.

Now those early problems you solved - the ones that felt like earth shattering problems at the time… They’re just a normal day for you now.

In fact, they wouldn’t even register as problems.

Your CAPACITY for problems is so much greater now, you’ve solved something twice as hard this morning without even considering it a problem.

Let me give you an example…

When Boris closed the gyms in March 2020, I moved my business online. And I stayed awake ALL NIGHT trying to figure out how to “build a website”.

What I actually wanted was a landing page with an exit popup. But I didn’t have ANY of those words so I couldn’t even google it.

It wasn’t even the right solution to the problem!

But that felt like a 10/10 problem in terms of:

• How hard it is

• How urgent it is to solve it

And my capacity to solve it (skill, money, time etc. was 0/10).

So I remember that.

Now? Every single day I come to work and probably 80% of the jobs on my list are things I have no idea how to do.

But my capacity has expanded so much that it’s normal.

For a coach, this might be getting stuck in telling the story of your own transformation…

Weight loss, rehabbing an injury, maybe burnout…

These are the things you built your audience around.

But you’re not talking about anything in “the inbetween”.

The reason old problems felt so significant is because it took 100% of your ability (and more) to solve them. You HAD TO expand. You HAD TO become someone new to solve them.

It took more of you then.

But you’re not showing your audience the level of competence you actually have now.

The good chapters are still valuable. But they’re harder to recognise.

Important caveat: You do not have to talk about ANYTHING you don’t want to talk about. The point isn’t that you’re 100% transparent - you still control the narrative. You choose what you disclose, always.

I talk about sharing scars, not wounds.

Stuff you’ve solved, not stuff you’re solving.

Use the audit below to work through which chapters you’ve been skipping…

Subscribe now

The Good Chapter Audit

Step 1: When you tell your story, where does it start and end? Write it out, in bullet point form - just to get the rough shape of it in order.

Step 2: When you tell your most common stories and share your lessons, there’ll be some parts you tell more than others… The parts you don’t tell: the little decisions that you used to lie awake worrying about, the hard conversations you avoided, the standard you no longer accept… Find 10 things that used to feel like a problem, but don’t any more.

Step 3: Find the fear for each of those things. It’s usually one of three things:

• Not feeling like an expert - it’s just “something you did”

• This already exists from someone way better to speak on it than me

• I don’t want to make an error and get called out for it

It might be that you’re worried about who you’d attract by talking about it - don’t think about this yet, just name it.

Step 4: What patterns do you see? You’ll find repeating patterns about the kind of coach you are now - not just back when you were getting started. The answers are your good chapters.

…they’re also the bridge to help you shift your niche from the people you served at the start, to people you’d like to serve now.

Want a hand pulling out the golden nuggets from your story?

→ Start a 7 day free trial of CathAI now.

…Listen to You Know My Steez here.

I want air conditioning in my house and the sales experience I had yesterday to arrange it was awful.

My house is traps heat, and now that I’m almost 42, I’m boiling all of the time.

So I want air con in my bedroom for sure, and maybe in the living room too.

Potentially a big sale.

I ring the company that already fitted my office and my gym - I’m an existing customer, already sold - and they send someone out.

He turns up on time. Good start.

But I’ve never met this guy before. He wasn’t the guy who installed the other ones.

Then he leans in my office doorway and goes, “who built this?”

He hasn’t even told me his name.

I’m hostile immediately.

We go upstairs to my bedroom. He sits down at my desk. In my chair. Settles in.

I hate strangers in my house. Do not sit down. Do not settle in. Measure your stuff and leave.

He starts explaining the ins and outs - listing units from worst to best. I stop him.

“Don’t tell me about the shit ones, pal. Just make one recommendation. You’re the expert.”

I need two pieces of information:

1. How much?

2. When can you start?

He has neither. He has to ring the office for a price. He doesn’t have his calendar.

After half an hour of this I felt like screaming - why are you here and SO badly prepared?

He totally fumbled it.

The lesson is crystal clear:

Inbound leads are convinced.

By the time you speak to them, they’re ready to go.

They’ve decided. Your marketing worked.

The only thing left to do is make the next step so obvious and frictionless that there’s no reason to pause.

What kills the deal is often unnecessary friction.

Options they didn’t ask for.

Information they don’t need.

Steps that should have been sorted before they arrived.

Go through your entire process - every step from first touchpoint to payment - and ask yourself: is this really important?

If not - chop it.

The goal is for someone to arrive ready to say yes, and any friction they feel is added 100% intentionally when you’re trying to pre-qualify them.

CathAI is open at founder pricing until May 4th - after that the price goes up when the proper launch page goes live. If you've been thinking about it, this is final date to grab the lowest annual price.