By: Dr. Sean Pastuch
KEY TAKEAWAYS:
- Your first clients aren’t strangers. They’re the people who already know, like, and trust you.
- A career-changer felt invisible in a town of 12,000. Her phone held 421 contacts, roughly 200 of them local and relevant.
- The move is one honest, personally written text that tells the truth about what you do now and the problems you solve.
- Expect roughly 10% to raise a hand, and a share of those to enroll. On the call, the math alone filled her week.
- Don’t prejudge who will help you. The people you expect to champion you often don’t, and the ones you’d never guess do.
When you're starting a coaching business from scratch, it feels like you have no audience. You almost certainly do. It's in your phone.
On a recent Sean Help Line call, Dr. Sean Pastuch coached Sarah, who left a decade as a veterinarian to become a coach in a town of 12,000 where everyone still knows her as "the vet." Her problem was getting in front of the right people. His answer started with her contacts list.
You're not unknown. You're known for the wrong thing.
Sarah worried that her town knew her as a veterinarian, not a trainer. But taking care of someone's pet was really taking care of the person — comforting them, explaining what was happening, walking them through it. She didn't need a new identity. She needed to tell the truth about why she changed and what she does now.
"All I did was tell the truth with words."
The list is already in your phone.
Sarah had 421 contacts, maybe 200 local and relevant. Sean walked the math with her: text all 200, and if about 10% say they're interested, that's 20 conversations. Qualify and enroll even 40% of those and you have eight new clients. At two sessions a week, that's enough to more than fill a schedule that currently had room.
"Sounds like we have a solution to the problem. It only really takes one big step: reaching out."
Tell the truth, in your own words.
The text isn't a sales blast. It's honest: who you are now, why you changed, and the handful of problems you're most excited to help with — someone who's been sedentary and doesn't know where to start, someone whose old injury flares every time they get active, and whatever your third is. Then make it human: let them know you wrote and sent it yourself, and there are no more texts coming unless they're interested.
Don't prejudge who shows up for you.
The instinct is to skip family, close friends, and anyone you assume won't care. Don't. When Sean launched his book, the people who'd promised for years to shout about it often went quiet, and people he almost didn't bother telling made the biggest connections for him. Assume the best in the people in your phone and let them surprise you.
A warm text gets the conversation. The skills to actually help those people are what turn it into a booked calendar. That's what the L1 workshop starts.
Start inside the assessment system. The L1 Biomechanics & Assessment Workshop is two days, live online, $19 (it was $1,500 in-person).
GRAB A SPOT — $19FAQ
A: Yes. Sarah had 421 contacts in a town of 12,000 and that was more than enough to fill her schedule. You don't need an audience; you need the people who already trust you.
A: Not if it's honest and personal. People who'd be put off by you starting a career you believe in aren't people you were going to work with anyway.
A: Who you are now, why you changed, the two or three problems you're most excited to solve, and a line that you wrote it yourself and won't text again unless they're interested.
A: On the call the math penciled out to roughly eight new clients from 200 texts — enough to overfill the week Sarah had open.
A: The $19 L1 Assessment Workshop. Four hours, live online, and the lowest-risk way to see if this is the work you want to be doing.
Adapted from a Sean Help Line call with Dr. Sean Pastuch. Watch the full call above.
📖 Every coach should read this one.
Live More. Hurt Less. by Dr. Sean Pastuch is the thinking behind the method — how pain actually works, and why the members who've "tried everything" are still stuck. Read it to sharpen how you coach, then put it in your clients' hands.
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