Start Making Money As a Coach or Consultant Without a Big Following

Today we’re going to talk about how to start making money as a coach or consultant without a big following. In this post we’ll be talking about why it is completely backwards thinking that you need a big brand first and then you start making money.

We’re also going to talk about why it is completely out of date to have a big brand and then make money. And most importantly, I’m going to give you a step-by-step guide on how to make money even if you have zero followers on Instagram, zero followers or subscribers on YouTube whatsoever.

The first two things I want to mention here in the beginning, I will go into greater detail later, is number one, write this down, create leads manually, and number two, content marketing as we know it, is a thing of the past, okay?

This is again, something that we’ve kind of learned with social media, and you know, we see the big players, the more mainstream people like Gary V., Tai Lopez, or Neil Patel, they’re all having huge brands.

They got the verified badge, they’ve got millions of subscribers, millions of followers on Instagram, etc. And then it kind of creates this false picture of, oh, we need to be absolutely famous, and, or, at least have a couple thousand subscribers in order to then generate any income.

But, that is completely wrong, people have been making money without a brand for decades before there was even social media, before there was web 2.0, before there was the internet, people have been learning to make money, okay?

People have been learning to generate leads manually. Now, I’m not saying social media is bad, social media can do a lot for you, but especially in the beginning, let that not hinder you.

Everyone Starts At Zero

I get that so many times, Mike, I don’t have a big brand like you. It creates this false reality of, oh I need to have a big brand and then I sell, but that’s not true.

In fact, everyone starts with zero followers, they have no brand whatsoever. But, they learn how to create, generate interest, generate leads as we call them, completely manually.

Here’s the great thing, once you learn how to generate leads manually, then creating an autotomized funnel, then creating a brand that gives you this passive stream of constant leads, then that will be even easier. You have to understand that.

Content marketing still works but you have to be consistent at it. Everybody will tell you, create as much content as you can, give out all new content for free, create a movement, create fans and then, right hook, hit them with something very, very enticing and good.

A good product, a good offer and then start making money. Great books to read on that, if you wanna dive deeper on that are Gary V., The Thank You Economy, and also Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook.

But again, it’s a little outdated now a days, why? Because there’s so much content out there now a days. There’s so many influencers out there. There’s so much free content, so much noise out there that it is very hard to even build a brand in the beginning.

It Takes Too Long

Brand building mistake number one, it takes you too long! It takes you way too long to generate income. First you have to create YouTube videos or write great content on your blog. You have to become good at creating valuable content.

You have to create hundreds of videos or posts until you get a reasonably sized audience for your brand. But even when you do that you still run into Brand building mistake number two.

Lack Of Proof

You can’t validate your offer, nor can you validate your funnel. So you’re creating all this free content and then you have a lot of eyes on you.

Let’s say you have 10,000 subscribers on YouTube, and now you’re like, okay, now I’m gonna create the offer. Here’s the offer, it’s there, all you fans can now buy my stuff.

And then you realize like nobody wants that offer. I don’t know, I’ve never sold anything, I cannot validate my offer, because I haven’t had any clients or customers.

So I’ve spent all these months, maybe even years creating free content, and now the offer’s here, I’m ready for the money, but nothing’s coming in.

Now let’s say you have a good offer, but you don’t know the copywriting part of it, you don’t know how to set up a funnel properly, maybe you do set up a funnel, but it doesn’t work, people jump off, people are not interested, people are not signing up for the free email newsletter.

The emails are not converting, the sales funnels aren’t converting, the video sales are not converting, and you’re scrambling and you’re scrambling because neither have you been able to validate your offer, nor have you been able to validate your funnel.

So there you’re sitting, having already invested all that time into building a following, building a brand, and you still cannot make money.

That’s a very, very bad thing. And now what happens to you, as a content creator, as someone who wants to be an entrepreneur, you get completely demoralized, because you’ve invested all this time, you’re still completely broke, you’re still living in your Mom’s basement.

Is that exciting? Does that make entrepreneurship exciting for you? Sure, deploy patience, by all means, there’s no magic pill to just make money within a day, or even a couple of weeks, but if you do it properly, you don’t need to invest tons of time and energy into creating content, creating a brand first.

It just takes too long, you cannot validate anything, and you’re just left being demoralized and having invested a ton of time without any return yet.

Generate Leads Manually

Instead, write down the following thing, get clients manually. I’ve mentioned it before, learn to get clients manually and thus, you get to know what they respond to.

Now, what do I mean by get clients manually? I’m gonna give you an example. Let’s say you’re expertise is, helping middle aged women, lose 10 to 20 pounds.

These middle aged women, they have kids, they don’t have a lot of time, they sure have buying power and they wanna lose a little bit of weight. They don’t need to become the next Instagram six pack model, they just wanna lose a little bit of weight.

What keeps you from going to Facebook, typing in weight loss for women, weight loss for women over 35. What keeps you from going onto these Facebook groups, writing to these Facebook groups.

You can start by saying, hey, I’m trying to get really good at that, I’m trying to give people value, let me know what the three biggest problems that you’re struggling with.

Now these people hit you up, you DM them back on the Facebook group, comment back, or DM them back directly and say, you know what, jump on a free consultation call, I’m gonna give you free tips.

You jump on a free consultation call with them, learn a few rules about selling, and now you can sell them during your free consultation.

You can even validate your offer for free first, if you really want to, but you can also sell them on a lower price, first test group offer. Now you’ve literally created clients out of nothing, without a funnel, without a page, without a sales copywriting, without having to create a brand whatsoever.

You’re literally saying, I’m offering you a free consultation, and now you can sell them during a free consultation call.

Now let’s say you’re a real estate coach, your expertise is real estate, what keeps you from literally, physically in the real world, going to real estate meetings.

You talk to people there, you’re helping them out. And you’re giving them some free value first, then you can sell them on an offer that you’ve created.

Now you can validate it right away with your first clients, ideally those clients already paid. This is how you create offers manually, you can go to events, meetings, Facebook groups, LinkedIn groups, you can search your personal network for people that you can help.

Do you understand? That is how you create leads manually. And again, if you don’t know how to create leads manually, you will never know how to create leads automatically.

Know Your Offer

Because, you will not know you’re target audience, you will not know what to respond to, you will not know what kind of words to use that they really resonate with.

You need to know your offer. Learn how to create leads manually first, and then you can think about an automated process. But by then, you’re already making money.

You’re already getting clients, you already have your offer validated, you already have your funnel validated, you know what kind of language to use to make the offer really enticing for them. You’ve already coached them.

Building a brand mistake number three, my brand is authority. That’s what everybody says. But how would the person know? If I write to middle aged women on Facebook, how would they know that I could really help them?

I need a brand, I need authority, right? Sure, a brand is authority, absolutely. But, you don’t need it to get your first clients. You could literally make a four to five figure income per month without any authority.

If you create clients manually, if you know how to give some value in a free consultation call and then you offer them your ideal offer that gives them real value, you can already make four or five figures, it’s that easy.

How Do You Create Authority If You Don’t Have a Brand?

Create authority personally, with your knowledge, with your expertise. Take my website away, take away the fancy watch, take away my social media or anything. Because I know how to create leads manually.

I can walk up to any person and I can show them that I have authority in my field, because I know it. If I talk to you in person about business, about coaching, consulting, businesses and how to build them, you will see that I have expertise in that.

I don’t need any brand, nothing, even if I’m a complete stranger to you. And again, if you learn how to create authority on a one-on-one basis, all you have to do then is scale that up later on once you’re already making money.

All you have to do is take the experience that you have from a person one-on-one, authority created. You take that, you scale it up, and you create social media posts on top of that.

It’s very, very simple. Here’s the crazy thing too, now let’s say you are creating leads manually. You’re already getting clients manually. What happens? You have existing clients, those clients are happy clients because you give them real value.

What do happy clients do? They create testimonials. They write you an email, a WhatsApp, they write in the Facebook group, in wherever it is you’re coaching them. They’re like, oh, I got the result, I’m really happy.

They may leave a voice message, they may go on a video call with you and you can press record, obviously you ask them and you say, hey, how is it going, what results have you gotten? They create happy testimonials for you.

They create referrals for you. They say, you know what, my friend can use your help as well. And now you have your authority, from a testimonial. How easy is it for you to get a second client, if you already have one happy client, easy.

How easy is it for you to get a third client, if you already have two testimonials from two very happy clients and so on and so forth. That is how you do it. And the crazy thing is too, you’re making money. You’re motivated. You’re inspired by the success stories from your clients.

The last point, write down the following, build a brand, but money first. Money first, then brand. Because at that time, you’re already breathing, money is the oxygen for your business. You’re already able to breathe, you’re already making good money.

Maybe you’re even able to hire certain people into your business that can help you deliver more value to your existing clients and now you can start creating content. That content can already include testimonials, can already include footage of you coaching.

Next time you’re coaching a client, put your iPhone on there, you don’t even need an iPhone stand. You can get the selfie camera on, go on the video and say, we’re sitting here, blah, blah, blah, and you’ll just let it run as your speaking to your clients.

Out of the one hour session that you have with one of your existing clients, you cut out five minutes that are really good, you pop those on YouTube, how much time did it take you to do that?

How easy is it for you to do that, because you already have a client, because you’re already making money. You’re already breathing oxygen. It’s that easy. And that is how to start making money, even if you have no brand at all, or a very, very small brand.

Learn more about: Things You Need To Know About Becoming An Entrepreneur

Start Making Money As a Coach or Consultant Without a Big Following – Conclusion

I hope this post has helped you. Now if you’re still reading this means you’re probably not a 10 out of 10 happy with the situation that you’re in right now.

Now if you say that does sound enticing, I do see myself doing that, but I’m not 100% sure if I can, or how I should do that, you literally just shoot me a message and we’ll do a free consultation call.

It’s very, very easy. That’s especially important if you already have an expertise, but you don’t quite know how to monetize it, or you’re already making money with your expertise, but you wanna make real money, good money, Then jump on a consultation call with me.

It’s not that hard to make money without a brand, or without a big brand. I hope you execute, this article is completely useless unless you execute these things.