If you’re a health or life coach, there’s a question that probably sits in the back of your mind most days. Where on earth do I actually find clients?

And the answers you get when you go looking are usually some version of the same thing. Post more on Instagram. Go and network. Slide into people’s DMs. Show up on stories every single day. Do the reels. Do the lives. Do all of it, forever, and eventually someone will work with you.

If that makes your whole nervous system contract, you’re not broken and you’re not lazy. You’re probably just wired in a way that makes constant, manual, chase-them-down marketing feel absolutely awful.

So I did something that I found genuinely fascinating, and I want to share it with you. I tracked where every single client enquiry came from over the last 12 months. Not vibes, not a guess, an actual spreadsheet with actual percentages. And the results back up something I’ve believed for a long time.

Listen to this episode on The Wholehearted Business Show Podcast: Listen on Apple Podcasts / Listen on Spotify

Where my clients came from as a health coach

Quick bit of context first, because I haven’t always done what I do now.

I started my business as a health coach back in 2012, when I began my certification. The online space looked wildly different then, but here’s the interesting part: most of my clients came through my blog. A big chunk also came through press, because around 2013 and 2014 I had a recipe book out and I was in a few magazines. And Pinterest was a massive source too.

Blog. Search. Discoverable content. Even back then.

Obviously a lot has moved on since. I’m now in the business of helping other coaches, which is a different niche entirely. But the core mechanics of how people found me have not shifted anywhere near as much as you’d expect. Which is exactly what the last 12 months of data shows.

If you want the full story of why I moved from health coaching to business coaching, I’ve got a whole blog post on that here.

I tracked where all my clients came from for 12 months

So, the breakdown. This covers 1:1 clients and some Wholehearted Business® members, pulled from the spreadsheet I use to track enquiries, plus a few extra questions I asked along the way to fill in the gaps.

I had a feeling about what I’d find. Seeing it in black and white was still really something.

40% came from YouTube. That’s the single biggest source by a mile. And here’s the bit I love: most of these people had not subscribed to the channel. They watched a video, something landed, and they reached out and booked a discovery call.

20% came from Google. Someone searched for something, found my website, had a look around at my services and offers, and either booked a discovery call or bought something. SEO is still very much alive, whatever anyone tells you.

The other 40% was a real mix, so I’ve lumped it together rather than slicing it into increasingly silly percentages. In there you’ll find:

The podcast. People write “I listen to your podcast” on the enquiry form. They may well have found me elsewhere first and then subscribed, but the podcast is what they name.

• Paid ads. People who came across an ad on Facebook or Instagram. More on this below, because it’s a bit different to everything else.
• AI, mostly ChatGPT. I had a discovery call last week with someone who found me through ChatGPT. She’d searched for something quite specific and I came up. That’s three people now who’ve told me they found me this way. It’s happening, and it’s growing.
• Webinars I ran for the UK and International Health Coaches Association. Two clients came through those. They sit on that organisation’s platform inside their membership, so people can find them at any point.

And one thing I expected to see that wasn’t there at all: bundles. I was genuinely surprised. I’m fairly sure I’ve had clients come through bundles further back, but not in the last 12 months.

Here’s the clear thing though. Not one client came from posting on Instagram or Facebook. Not one came from a DM. Not one came from networking.

Long form marketing versus short form marketing

I am actually dipping a toe back into Instagram at the moment, for strategic reasons. And honestly? I recently spent about 45 minutes trying to make two 30 second reels. Forty five minutes.

Meanwhile I can sit down, hit record, and talk to you for 20 minutes with a couple of notes in front of me. Long form is so much easier for me. It suits how my brain works, it suits how I like to show up, and it produces something that keeps working for months and years afterwards rather than disappearing in 24 hours.

That’s not a small thing. The marketing that works best is usually the marketing you’ll actually keep doing.

Spontaneous client enquiries

Here’s what I really want you to take from this.

Every single one of these clients was what I call a spontaneous client enquiry. I open my inbox, there’s a notification from my CRM saying someone has enquired, and the next thing I know there’s a discovery call in the diary. Often with someone I’ve never spoken to before. They just appear, like magic.

No chasing. No DMing. No following up with someone I met at a networking thing six weeks ago and feeling weird about it. I create the content, I run the ads, I put it out into the world, and because the strategy underneath it is right, the correct people find it and get in touch when the timing is right for them.

For those of us who are highly sensitive and heart centred, this matters enormously. The chase-based approach doesn’t just feel uncomfortable, it grinds against your nervous system until you stop marketing altogether.

I’m not going to bullshit you though. This takes time to build. It is not an overnight thing. But building it, either instead of or alongside the more hands-on approaches, gets you clients in a far more sustainable way.

And it isn’t just me. I’ve got a number of clients building these exact systems who are now getting their own spontaneous enquiries and their own discovery calls landing in the diary.

Do paid ads work for attracting clients?

Quick note on ads, because they’re the one thing on that list that isn’t organic content.

Organic content marketing does an enormous amount of heavy lifting. It builds trust, connection, community and authority in a way ads simply can’t. But sometimes the volume isn’t there, or you don’t have the time to put in the level of strategy that would get you that volume. That’s where ads come in.

I have a lead generation ad running almost permanently in the background, bringing new people onto my email list. Once they’re in my world, I send them this content. Because it was never just about being found. It’s about people getting to know me, seeing how I work and what underpins it, and deciding for themselves whether this is the way they want to grow their business.

Everything works together.

Does this work for other coaches?

Yes, and not just in my niche. I work with career coaches, health coaches across all sorts of specialisms, spiritual coaches and psychic mediums. All sorts of people with the word coach attached to what they do.

It works because it isn’t one single thing. It covers the multiple bases you need to be covering to attract enquiries without hustling or trashing your nervous system to get them.

Where to go from here

Creating content this way is one piece of the puzzle. A big piece, but not the whole thing. Making it work as a full client attraction system for your coaching business takes several other strategic pieces sitting underneath it.

That’s exactly what we do inside Wholehearted Business®, my 12 month programme, which is opening in September. It’s a small group and you work directly with me, both in the group and one to one. No enormous cohort of a hundred plus coaches, no associate coaches standing in. Always me.

If any of this resonates, particularly if you’re highly sensitive, heart centred or neurodivergent and you want a way of growing a coaching business that feels solid, sustainable and calm, get on the waitlist here.

And I’d genuinely love to know: where have your clients been finding you?

Laura 💖

↓Pin for later ↓