So Josh is a dietitian. He does strength and conditioning and nutrition with athletes on a pro football team, the 49ers, and he’s working 60 to 70 hour weeks there, sometimes 80. That’s his day job.
And in eight weeks, on the side, he went from zero clients to 15 clients and over $41,000 in sales. I mean, most people with a wide open calendar can’t do that.
He sat down with my team to talk through how it happened. Watch the interview, then I’ll go through what I think actually mattered.
He had the logo. He didn’t have clients.
Before he came in, Josh spent a couple years trying to get his own thing going. Logos, setting stuff up, all of that. And he basically had no clients. The few nutrition clients he did have, he’d meet with whenever they wanted to meet, which, I mean, that’s a favor schedule, not a business.
He said it pretty plainly: he was turned off by sales because he wasn’t any good at it. He knew he wanted to keep growing it, he just didn’t know how.
This is super common with coaches who are good at the coaching. Josh knows nutrition. He works with pro athletes. Skill was never the issue. He told us the only thing separating him from the people getting clients was that they knew something about sales and getting people in the door that he didn’t. That’s the gap for a lot of coaches I talk to.
Step one was letting people know he was open for business
The first thing that changed was simple. He got his social media primed and started reaching out to people, letting them know he was there to help. And once people saw he was doing it on a regular basis, a lot of them started reaching out to him.
Think about that. A lot of those people were already around him. They just had no idea he took clients. It’s like being single and never telling anyone, then wondering why nobody sets you up. You have to put it out there.
What I’d do in his spot is the exact same thing. Post so people know what you do, then actually message people, every day, not once. It shocks me how many grown adults will not send 100 messages a day.
A sales process he could make his own
The second piece was the sales process. Josh said it worked for him because now he had a set of questions to ask, a way to approach people, and a way to get them in the door. Then once they’re on a call, the second half is the actual sales process.
And he didn’t just read it off a sheet. He put his own tweak on it, what he wanted to say, how he talks. He described it as getting the concepts and then forming them to fit how he’d talk.
That’s how it should work. A script you’re married to sounds like a script, and people can tell. But having no structure is worse, because then you’re chatting for 45 minutes and hoping they ask how to pay. You need the steps, then you make it sound like you.
He said without that there’s no way he gets the sales he got. I believe him. He went from avoiding sales to closing 15 people in two months. Same guy, same knowledge of nutrition. The only thing that changed was he knew what to say.
Automation is how he did it next to an 80 hour job
This is the part I think people skip over. Josh said learning to automate everything on the back end was a huge timesaver, and that there’s no way he could’ve worked for the 49ers and run his own business at the same time without it.
The websites and tools my team showed him streamlined how he works with clients. Even scheduling appointments got way easier. When you have 15 clients and a job that eats 60 to 80 hours of your week, you can’t be the guy manually texting everyone to find a time. You’d lose your mind.
A lot of coaches tell me they don’t have time to grow. Josh had less time than basically anyone and still did it. So when someone tells me they’re too busy, I usually look at how much of their week is stuff a tool could do for them.
The numbers
Zero clients to 15 clients in eight weeks. Over $41,000 in sales. He hit $10,000 within the first 30 days, and he said that part came pretty easily.
Quick math, $41K across 15 clients is about 2,700 bucks a client, give or take. And he actually had to slow it down, because he was bringing on too many people too fast while balancing both jobs. That’s the best problem you can have. Most coaches would love to be stuck with too many clients.
He was scared too
Josh said going in he was scared. He’d bought one of my super low ticket products first, and then at some point decided he had to actually pull the trigger.
He started the same day he signed. First sale within the first week.
His take: when you put your money where your mouth is, you’re up against a wall and it’s on you to get things done. I agree with that. At 25 I put the $2,000 I had plus $3,000 on a credit card into a mentor, and it’s the same feeling. You don’t half do something you paid for like that.
He also said you’re not going to learn this stuff on your own, and if you do it’s going to take you a long time. I’d know. From 22 to 25 I made about $2,000 total in my business trying to figure it out alone. That’s the trade off.
What he wants next
Josh is staying on for the next level. His goal down the road is a full business where he’s the CEO, with coaches under him and people doing the sales and the messaging. He said part of why he signed up is that we’ve been through it before, so he doesn’t have to make the same mistakes.
That’s the right goal. Right now he’s the coach, the closer and the scheduler, plus a full time job. That works at 15 clients. It doesn’t work at 50.
So if you’re a coach who’s good at the coaching and bad at the selling, look at Josh. He didn’t get smarter about nutrition. He told people he was open, learned a sales process and made it his own, then automated the back end so his job didn’t kill it. That’s it.
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