In today’s episode, we’re going to talk about one powerful strategy to land more clients.

Let’s get into it now. Hey guys, Dino Gomez here and you are listening to the Secrets of Coaching podcast, where we break down the nuances of growing a seven figure online coaching business. And we are about to get started in 3 2 1. All right, guys, one super duper powerful strategy to land more clients in your coaching business. All right. And actually, even if you’re an agency owner as well.

OK, here we go, guys.

It is all about storytelling. All right. And here is why. There’s an old cliche saying that people buy from people they know, like and trust. All right. and I actually would like to update that. I even asked my business attorney if I could trademark this slogan. He said it’d probably be tough to do, but that’s unfortunate. But remember where you heard this first.

I believe there’s four reasons why people buy it. All right.

I think people buy from people they know, like, trust and relate to. All right. You might have heard me talk about this in another episode, but the relatability factor is absolutely huge.

Right. Moms are more likely to take recommendations from other moms. Dads are more likely to take a recommendation from dads. Bearded dudes are likely to take a more recommendation from a big bearded dude on what’s the best grooming electronic hair clipper device to make your beard look awesome and remain awesome. Right. Because they relate. They like things in common. All right. And so people buy from people that they relate to. Right. And they’re more likely to buy it.

Like this is how you can beat the gurus guys is because if you are able to demonstrate to your audience that you have a lot in common with them or that they can somehow relate to you in one way, shape or form, they’re going to choose you over the guru just for that particular reason. All right. And so this is how you beat the gurus. This is how you eliminate your competition. It’s all about being yourself. All right.

And the way you do that right is you got to tell stories. People love stories. All right. And so I’m going to tell you guys a story right now. All right. It all starts about let’s see, this was about 10 years ago.

I was twenty three years old and my buddy, who is living in Shanghai, China.

All right. And so he’s like, dude, you need to come out here and visit me. He was out there teaching English for six months. All right. He’s like, you got to check out the city. It’s freaking awesome. The food’s incredible. Everything’s super cheap. Like way to try one of these pot stickers. It’s insane. The noodle dishes are amazing. I was like, I’m sold.

All right, I’m coming. All right. So I booked my flight and everything like that.

And it’s like twenty three hours or some some got off flight. And as long as I’m right and I fly over there solo, I’m single at the time and you know, he picks me up at the airport or whatever and and make it to his apartment and hang out.

We get to Shanghai, China. Right.

And so he’s an English teacher, so he teaches for about four hours a day. He’s got classes. And so the very first day, like the very first day there. Right. He’s like it was Monday or something like that. He’s like, OK, you know, I got to take off. I got four hours of classes.

He’s like, but here’s a map of Shanghai, China, which is a pretty complicated city, I will tell you to navigate. He’s like, but, you know, you can hop on this this train system here and then it’ll take you this train system here. If you do that, I’ll take you over the Bunday, which is like the cool river, and you’ll be able to see all the stuff. And like, that’s a tourist spot and like a place to definitely grab photos and all the things.

Right. And so I wasn’t going to just sit around in his apartment and wait for him to come back and be my tour guide. I was like, no, I want to get out here and see the city. Right. I want to check things out. I want some noodle dishes and whatnot. And so I attempted to follow his instructions and I took one train and I took the second train and I made it there.

I made it to the main central area and, you know, a lot of tourist shops and things of that nature and took in all the sights and saw the cool river and took a lot of photos and sat down for a great lunch and had a beer and some noodles. And it was just awesome. Right of freedom like this on a Monday in the middle of the week. Right. You know, most people are working and I’m halfway across the world enjoying noodle dishes.

It’s like the other digital nomads dream. Right? And so I’m just like, wow, this is just so cool. And I’m having such a blast and learning so much and, you know, sticking out like a sore thumb for the most part and in terms of looks and everything. But just having an incredible time. All right. And all of a sudden four hours goes by. And I was like, OK, I should probably get back to my buddy’s apartment so we can catch up, make plans for dinner or something like that.

So pull out my map and I’m like, OK, well, I should technically just have to take the two trains, you know, that I took here back. Well, you know, everything is written in what I will call Egyption, but all the signage and everything is written in another language that I cannot decode and so I will quickly got spun around and forgot where I needed to go to get to the first train station.

And so I, you know, no big deal. I just walked up to this friendly looking couple and tap on the shoulder and say, hey, with my map looking like a super tourist, a backpack on and all the whole thing, how do I get to this railway railway system? And they both look at each other and just shrug and say, sorry, you know, we don’t speak English.

And so I was like, OK, no worries. And I go tap another 10 people on the shoulder. Pointing to where I’m trying to go, can you get me here? And, you know, same thing.

And so then real quickly, I realized, I’m kind of in a spot, OK, this is going to be interesting.

I was like, all right, here we go.

The adventure has officially started, you know, well done. And so then what happens is I sat there for a moment and I’m thinking, my heart’s starting to be a little bit faster because I was like, OK, I’m lost. And then halfway across the world in this massive city and with millions of people and have no idea, you know, how to get in touch and how to get back to my buddy’s apartment.

And I forgot what the deal was with cell phones out there. I forget whether I didn’t have service on or I hadn’t picked up my special SD card or something like that quite yet. So, like, I couldn’t call him, that wasn’t an option. All right. And so I had to figure this out on my own. So I located a couple tourist shops and I thought, ha, the tourist shops.

Right. They probably speak English. Nope, they certainly did not. You come in and I like, grabbed a piece of gum and then check it out. And I was like I pulled out my map and I was like, can you get me here and you know, look at each other.

Nope. You know, no speaking. we don’t speak English. And I was like, OK, all right, thanks. And so I’m really sitting there racking my brain, like, how in the hell am I going to get back to my buddy’s apartment? Like, this is not good because again, it took me about 30-45 minutes to get out there. So, like, I know I’m like far away on the other side of town, essentially.

And so, yeah, a little bit of panic for a moment.

But I was like, nah, everything will be fine. And and so, yeah, I continued to go tap people on their shoulder and visit these tourist shops just in case one of them spoke English.

And finally.

Right, I get to a little tourist shop and the guy goes, I can get you there, but it’ll cost you. And I was like, OK, how much? And he’s like, I think either said fifteen or twenty dollars and things are cheap out there. And I was like, really, man, you’re really going to pull this on me.

And, you know, that’s what I was thinking. But at the time I was like, I don’t care. Like I just need to make it back. So I was like, sure, here’s 20 bucks, take me there. And so he said something to his wife, who was the other shopkeeper. And so she was going to take over and then he just, you know, waved his hand to follow him. And so he walked me about, fifteen minutes where, like, that train station was.

And I got on the first train station. And it’s been a long day because, again, I’d been traveling for twenty four hours the day before and my sleeping schedules off didn’t sleep well the night before but was excited to get out of town. So nonetheless, this part of the day, 4 or 5 p.m. in the afternoon, I’m pretty exhausted. All right. And so he gets me to the train station. So I hop on and I sit down and I fall asleep.

So I fall asleep on the subway or on the train railroad railway system because I’m just exhausted right now. My sunglasses on. So it’s not like you can tell I’m sleeping, but I have my sunglasses on. Maybe you could tell because I’m slouching back in the chair or something like that. But anyways, I get woken up by one of the train guys, a conductor or something like that. They have the cool hats.

I got woken up by one of those guys and, you know, he points that I need to get off and I wake up and I look and the train is completely empty. And now I realize that I literally took the train into the end of the train station, like where they parked the trains at the end of the day, it’s over. So I missed the connect, you know, getting off to get on to the next connecting train that was going to run horizontally and, get me towards my buddy’s place.

All right. And so I was like, OK, crap, here we go again. Right.

And so anyways, make a long story short. After a lot of running around and things of that nature, I make it back to my buddy’s apartment. And it was a huge relief and forever lives as an amazing story. I have some photos on my Facebook page of me in Shanghai, China, and it was a blast, but.

Crazy day, crazy story, but I wrote that post on Facebook, I told that story on Facebook recently, and then I ended my post by saying, hey, has anybody else been lost in a foreign country before?

And the comment section went nuts. So many people are like, oh, my gosh. Actually, several people said, I have been lost in Shanghai, China. And I was like, OK, good.

I’m glad I’m not the only one. I’m not an idiot if everybody is getting lost out there. But everybody came up with the coolest stories people were posting about being lost, having their wallet stolen, and being in another country where they don’t speak any language. So they don’t have money, they don’t have their ID and they don’t know where they are. And they don’t speak the language like It was really cool by all the stories and stuff come out like that.

But I share these stories on Facebook and on this podcast and stuff like that because I love to travel.

My wife and I, besides covid normally travel for about two months per year to normally Southeast Asia. We really like it out there, but we made it to Europe last year. And but I’m consistently releasing stories, sometimes business related, sometimes just stories of my personal life. And the reason I’m doing that is I’m giving my audience a chance to connect with me. Right.

Because so many people commented on that post and say, I love traveling. Right. Or I also got lost while traveling and things of that nature. And that’s what the relatability factor is. Right. Like that’s something that the gurus don’t have on you.

They don’t have your stories. All right. And so you want to share stories. Guys, this is how people can connect with you. Like, I honestly hired my business coach based on a story that he told about how he likes to go to, likes a certain type of music and likes to go to a certain type of show.

All right. And I was looking at a couple of different business coaches. And then he wrote, I saw a couple of posts from him that were non-business related. He writes business post and then business related Facebook posts. And then he wrote a post about my personal life story and things of that nature and how he likes certain type of music. And then I like that same music. And I was like, OK, boom, that is my coach, that’s my coach.

Like, we have so much in common. And, you know, he had a very similar resume, so to speak, to this other guy. I was considering as a mentor, but I was like, no, I resonate with this guy a lot more like I think it’d be cool to hang out with him and stuff. All right. And that right there, guys, is the relatability factor. All right. And that is how you can make your competition irrelevant.

Start telling stories, any story, how you landed your first client, how you got started entrepreneurship.

Oh, you know what happened with your first coaching client? A mistake you made.

If you tell stories of a mistake you made. Right, make sure it’s what I call a story of triumph. So it is OK to share stories of mistakes that you have made as long as they are past tense and you also overcame them. All right. Because a big mistake you coaches make is and that people make in general that do any type of use, any social media for business related purposes as they might have a bad day like, oh, my gosh, I got in a car accident today.

And today sucks. Like I’ve seen those Facebook posts before. And what happens? The comment section blows up because people care. All right. We feel bad for you. Oh, my gosh. I feel so horrible for you. I hope everything turns out OK. Right. So the comment section blows up and and people. It’s proven right that we get a surge of adrenaline or, you know, that kind of like an OxyContin like shot when we have people like that comment a lot on our poster for post does really well.

Engagement rap wise.

Well, I want to make it clear, guys, there’s two different styles of posts and they serve different purposes.

There’s engagement style posts that are supposed to get engagement, OK? And that’s the entire purpose of it. And then there are business posts that are, you know, testimonial posts or offer posts or other types of posts that are, again, supposed to build your authority and otherwise make sure that your audience knows there’s an offer on the table for you to help them. All right, now. But you don’t want to do the pity post, all right?

Because nobody wants to hire a mentor who looks like things are their life is in shambles. OK, so it’s OK to have off days. Nobody’s perfect. I’m certainly not perfect. Not sure if you heard one of my previous episodes about how I in college was diagnosed with schizophrenia from doing too many drugs, but like I’m, you know, human as well. But you can tell all those stories as long as you have overcome them. And so I’ve also shared a previous episode that did really well.

It’s actually one of the most listened to episodes on this podcast, which is a massive sales mistake that I made last year. I talk about the mistake I made, but also how I fix the mistake. So another thing, another cool tip for you is to realize people love hearing just as much about mistakes to avoid as they do things that are working right now. All right. And so when. You make a mistake in your business as a coach, you don’t have to freak out, like if you recently one of our clients, she made a huge mistake pricing her program wrong by giving it away for free to some people and not to others.

And then it backfired on her kind of and she was freaking out about it. And I was like, hey, everything’s going to be fine.

Like, here’s how we’re going to handle this situation. And then I was like, but make sure you journal this right.

And I’m always telling my clients to write down and journal everything because guess what this is going to become an amazing story and piece of content for you to share later.

Right, because everything’s going to work out. And later on, this is something for you to share to your clients. Here’s what not to do. Don’t give your program away for free to old clients and then charge new clients a high ticket price for it because, you know, X, Y, Z reasons. Right? And so I was like, you know, we’ll get through this. We’ll handle this right now. But just know that this is cool because, you know, everybody makes mistakes.

The best thing you can do, right, is record it as a memory so that you can teach it later as a story. Right. And you can literally this would be a great Facebook post or a Facebook live or an email or a podcast episode of Here’s a Mistake I made, you know, selling my coaching services and here’s what not to do. And here’s what I did to fix it. Now everything’s fine. All right. And so those are called Stories of Triumph, right, where you talk about a mistake I made and how I overcame it.

People love that, but don’t do the pity posts and and write stories. Guys, tell stories about your life, tell stories about what you’re interested in, tell stories about your family, about your childhood, about your 20s in your 30s, in your 40s and your 50s, tell your life lessons, things that you learned, mistakes that you made and overcame. And because that’s how people can relate to you.

And recently I wrote a post, another strong post to write. I think we’ll save this for another episode. We’ll dive more into it. All right. And so I’ll save that for another episode. But there’s all these different pieces of content that work really well to make you stand out as an online coach. And that’s what you want to do, guys. And so the relatability factor is huge.

Make sure you give your audience a chance to relate to you. All right. So if you’re doing Facebook lives and you normally do them from your office, that’s awesome. But try and do some Facebook lives when you’re out exercising, going for a walk, when you’re on vacation, when you’re with your family, like give people a glimpse, an opportunity to relate to you, show them your pets and your house if you’re willing to, and things of that nature like people really love.

It’s why reality TV does so well. Right. People want to know, like and think. It’s so cool to see behind the scenes of what a celebrity’s life is really like. Right. And so that’s what we want to do, is we want to we want people to be able to relate to us, to really understand us, to feel like they know us. Right. And that will increase your sales, make it so that, you know, that’s a huge marketing angle that distinguishes you from your competition because your competition is going to have different stories and different interests, different likes, all the different things.

And some people are going to be like, nope, I like Dino’s stuff more and I relate to this dude way more other people are going to be like, nope, I like the guru stuff more and I like his stories and his resume or whatever it is. Right. But that’s how you beat the gurus guys. That’s how you land clients. Right. You’d be surprised. You think you have to land clients by always talking about business.

You have just as high a chance, if not higher, higher chance of landing clients by writing a really powerful story and being vulnerable, showing you are human right. Because people love to go like, you know what? I went through the same thing. And, you know, I appreciate what you said there. That really helped me out. I know you’re my coach now because, you know, that’s what I’m going through.

And I saw obviously how well you’re doing now after having gone through that. That like is so freaking powerful guys. I can’t say that enough. So that’s what we have for this episode, guys.

That is called the relatability factor. As a reminder, people buy from people they know, like, trust and relate to.

All right.

So give them a chance to relate to you by showing your goofy self, your weird self, your unique self, your cool self, whatever it is you’re confident self or your insecure self.

Show yourself so that people have a chance to relate. All right. So that is it for this episode.

Guys, as always, keep doing you and have an absolute blast with your online business. We got some fire episodes coming up, so make sure to stay tuned, hit the subscribe button so you get notified when they come out.

Hey, Dino Gomez here. And if you enjoyed this episode, be sure to head on over to the secretsofcoaching.com for more resources, downloads, videos and cheatsheets to help you grow your online coaching business. All right. And if you picked up a cool tip or strategy from this particular episode, we would love a five star review where every single month we choose one lucky winner to win access to one of our coaching programs. All right, so that is it for this episode guys, we will see you in the next one bye bye.