One of the main concerns I hear from many a life coach is they think they can’t get coaching clients without having their website up. Or without having their business cards ready. Or without brochures, or whatever else it is. Whether they need a new haircut, a new car, or something else they need to set up BEFORE they can attract clients.

This is all a big lie. Let me tell you why. When you first start out, there are three phases to building a successful coaching practice. Phase one is about the inner mental game, your mindset, and transforming your emotional programming. Once you have this foundation, then you are ready to add phase two, which is all about learning how to sell and attract clients without struggle. You should focus on attracting your first twenty clients fairly easily while mastering these first two stages. Without a website or anything else. By just simply talking to people. I made my first $18,000 coaching without any materials, by just having conversations with people.

Phase three is when you incorporate your website, business cards and anything else your heart desires. But not until you have mastered the first few phases. And by this time you will already have clients anyway.

What I’ve noticed with many life coaches is they want to put the cart before the horse. They’re looking for all this outside stuff, like websites, to get more coaching clients. This is mostly because they don’t trust themselves. They have this little voice in the back of their heads that doubts they can be successful. So they think that maybe if they get a website or business cards or whatever else, that maybe that can help them to get clients, because it sure isn’t coming from within them.

These coaches fear making a claim for themselves as a coach. They don’t think people will buy from them. And it’s hard for them to promote themselves. As a result, they think the website might save them and might trick people into buying from them. They subtly think the website will show their true value as a coach, so that way they don’t have to make the claim themselves.

If this is you, it’s common for many coaches just starting out. And even if your intentions came true and the website brought in lots of people to call you, well, you would still have to talk to them. You would still have to make that claim anyway.

If you’re just starting out, the main question you want to ask yourself is how much time are you spending actually talking to potential clients about coaching? How much of your time are you whittling away avoiding talking to clients by Twittering, by setting up your graphic design on your website or by choosing the card stock for your business cards? Because what you really need to spend all your time on in the beginning is talking to people, enrolling clients in your coaching business.

You need to be directly providing value to your clients. You need to be creating breakthroughs for them and making a difference for them. That’s how you make the claim that you’re a coach -- not by telling someone that you coach and asking them if they want to coach with you.

Don’t worry about your website or cards until you’ve had at least twenty clients under your belt. Mastering sales and being able to claim and proclaim your value as a coach is the most critical skill you need to learn as a coach. That will serve as the foundation for everything else you do, especially building your website and having a successful coaching practice.