Do you find yourself caught up in a cycle of “feast or famine” in your coaching business?

Wouldn’t it be great if you could ditch that constant struggle and have a never-ending stream of your perfect clients raising their hand to work with you? 

All of this is possible when you shift your focus to building an “expert platform.”

Here are the five steps that will take you from being a virtual unknown to a highly sought-after coach?

1. Operate in Your Zone of Genius

The first step to becoming a highly paid expert is to operate in your zone of genius. I call this “your edge.” Most of the struggling coaches and consultants I meet are doing too many things. They lack focus. They’re the ones that are a life coach and a business coach and a fitness instructor. They try to play in too many markets and solve too many problems.

If you’re struggling to be seen and heard online, take a close look to see if you’re stuck in the trap of the generalist.

Generalists are not considered experts. To transition to expert status, you need to specialize in one area. What are you great at? What are your superpowers, the things that give you an edge over everyone else? 

When you build a business where you’re operating in your edge, you will always have clients. This edge is what elevates you to ultimately becoming an expert. 

The next step is understanding how to clearly express the value of your edge in a powerful, concise way so that people know in an instant that you’re the best person to solve their problem.

This is known as your value proposition, a statement that clearly articulates who you are, who you serve, the problems you solve, and the results that come from working with you.

Many coaches and consultants lack clarity around their value proposition. 

I guarantee that if you’re unclear about what you do, no one else is going to be able to understand either. If your ideal clients can’t easily and quickly grasp who you are, what you do, and what differentiates you from your competitors, the chances of them hiring you are slim to none.

Remember that clarity creates confidence and confidence creates certainty, which ultimately is what allows you to close more sales.

2. Create Credibility in Your Area of Expertise

Now that you’re operating in your edge and building your business around your greatest gifts, the next key is to focus on creating credibility. Credibility helps you to attract more clients.

Many struggling coaches and consultants lack credibility. They continuously pitch their services on social media and then are dumbfounded when no one buys.

If you’re stuck in a cycle of self-promotion and no one is buying, I guarantee it’s because you haven’t taken the time to build your credibility. 

When you have credibility, you’ll be able to attract that perfect client every single time. There’s an actual process for creating credibility that involves creating value-based content and sharing your expertise on podcasts, in articles, and at events.

The good news is, you can do this relatively quickly, but you absolutely have to have the credibility to be considered an expert.

If you don’t have credibility, you will never become in-demand, and it’s going to be difficult for you to attract clients and command more money for your services.

3. Create an Offer That Solves Big, Urgent Problems

The third step is to create an irresistible high ticket, high value offer priced at $10,000, $25,000, $50,000, even $100,000. Your high-ticket offer should focus on solving an urgent problem and be so value-packed that it seems “pricey yet affordable.” This means even though the price tag on your services may be high, the solution to the client is so powerful, the investment of working with you is actually inexpensive (compared to what they get.)

If you doubt your prospects will see the value of working with you and be willing to pay higher prices, then consider what it’s really “costing them” not to solve their problem. I guarantee you the pain of their problems far outweighs the investment of working with you.

Remember that the way you price, position, and talk about your offers (messaging) is key to elevating yourself as an expert. It’s how you go from being perceived as one of the many coaches and consultants to choose from that solve “small problems” to one of the experts who solves big problems. 

If you’re struggling to sell a $3,000 package, I guarantee you it’s a positioning, pricing and messaging issue. When these three things are all aligned, people will buy.

4. Build An Audience of Raving Fans

The fourth step is building your perfect audience. There are two main ways to do this – organic and paid. Organic, or free traffic, aka “earned traffic,” is where you take the time to “earn their attention” with organic value-based content. Paid traffic is where you spend money to “buy their attention.” Regardless of which you choose, you must build an audience. 

You also have to nurture your audience. This is where a lot of coaches and consultants fail because they focus more on constant promotion rather than giving value. As a result, their social media profiles become spam central. That’s not how you create raving fans. 

Remember that people love to buy, but they hate to be sold to. There is a time and a place for promotions, but if that’s all you do, you will turn your audience off quickly, and they will stop paying attention to you.

Consulting and coaching are a multi-billion dollar industry! This means there is a huge opportunity to grab a share of the market. The best way to do this is to focus on providing your audience with value.

How else will they know you’re an expert? Remember, there are people out there right now that have big problems that need to be solved. You need to find them and pull them into your network.

You don’t need 100,000 followers. You don’t even need 10,000 followers to make a lot of money. What you do need to have is an audience of people that adore you, that see you as the expert, that raised their hand and say, “Hey, I want to work with you.”

5. Move Them From Your Inbox to Your Bank Account

The final step is all about the sale. You’re operating in your zone of genius. You’ve got an irresistible high-ticket offer. You’re going to get your clients a big result, and they’re going to pay you a ridiculous sum of money.

You have an audience of people that know, like, and trust you. You have qualified leads coming in. People are messaging you every day, asking about your services.

The final step is to have a clear sales process to move them from your inbox to your bank account. This is where you take someone from being a lurker to being a buyer. This requires a clear sales process, one that easily transfers confidence from you to the prospect, so they ultimately become a paying client.

When you execute these five steps, you can quickly elevate your status as an expert. You will no longer be viewed as “the bargain coach or consultant.” You will be seen as an in-demand expert who can command top dollar for your time and knowledge.

Your perfect prospects will gravitate towards you. They will want to be around you and absorb your content. They will want to join your list, and they will want to work with you.

Focus on building an expert business, and there are no limits to the impact and income you can make.