You need clients now. Your email list is under 300 and your following is under a thousand. You do not have to wait until that changes.
This episode is a virtual crotch kick to get you into the DMs, because sales has always been about talking to humans.
Listen to the podcast here:
In this episode you’ll learn:
- Why most coaches who need clients fast have a list under 300 and a following under 500
- Why selling without ever talking to anyone only works for people who are already excellent at messaging, offers, sales and copy
- Why Kendra turned off all of her automated evergreen funnels
- How many people you actually need on a list to get 15 people on a live webinar
- What selling looked like before the internet (door-to-door salespeople, car salesmen, events, handshakes)
- The client who was four weeks out from a launch with no time for ads or list building, and what she did in the DMs instead
- Where to find your first conversations: your personal network, people already engaging, public Facebook groups, and the boosted post strategy
- Why Kendra welcomes every new follower, and why only 30 to 40% reply (and why that’s fine)
- The client Kendra followed up with for months before she bought
- The potty training story that turned into a sale
- Why DMs are the fast route, not the only route, and why you still need to build your list
Resources mentioned:
How to Get Clients When You Have No Email List and No Following
You need clients. Not eventually. Now. Maybe it’s about the money, maybe you want the experience, maybe your savings account is giving you a look. And when you check your numbers, your email list is under 300 and your social media following is under a thousand.
Most advice at this point tells you to build the list, grow the following, and post better content. All of that is fine. None of it will put a client in your calendar this month.
Here’s what will: talking to people. Actual conversations, mostly in direct messages, and then on calls. This is how business worked long before the internet, and it still works faster than any funnel, any reel, and any lead magnet you haven’t built yet.
This post walks through why that is, where to find your first conversations when you don’t have an audience, what to expect (including the ugly parts), and how to keep going without burning out.
Why “I Need Clients Now” Rarely Works With a Tiny List
When a coach tells me they need clients fast, I ask three questions. The answers are almost always the same.
What the numbers usually look like
- How big is your email list? Usually a number under 300.
- How big is your social media following? Usually under 500, sometimes under a thousand.
- How engaged are people? A lot of the time the answer is “not very.” Few comments, few DMs.
None of that makes you a bad coach. It makes you early. But it does mean the usual playbook (post content, collect emails, send a launch) doesn’t have enough fuel yet.
Why a small list can’t carry a sale on its own
A list of 100 people might give you one or two clients if everything goes well. To get more clients you need another 100 people, and then another 100. You have to keep growing it, constantly. I don’t know many people who sign a client out of a 100 person email list, or even a 300 person one. It can take a long time, and you can’t pay your bills with “a long time.”
Live selling has the same math problem. If you want to run a live webinar, you want about 15 people in the room at a minimum. To get 15 people live, you probably need 60 to 100 signups, and to get that many signups you need a list of around 1,200 people or more. That’s a perfectly reasonable thing to build toward. It’s a really discouraging thing to hear when you’re newer and your list is sitting at 140.
And content isn’t a quick fix either. Honestly, I’m struggling a little with content too right now. What gets seen and what gets traction has changed so much that almost everyone is guessing. If you’re pouring hours into posts and hoping a client DMs you, you’ll be waiting a long time, and it will be inconsistent.
So what are the options? Wait until the list is big enough, the following is big enough, and the content is good enough? Or skip the waiting.
Why Automated Selling Isn’t Saving Anyone Right Now
Over the last few years, online business convinced us we could pull ourselves out of the sales process entirely. Set up the funnel, run the traffic, let the emails do the selling. And for a while, that worked for a lot of people.
It doesn’t work as well anymore.
Who automated selling still works for
I’m not going to say it doesn’t work, because of course it can work. There are people it’s working wonders for. But those people tend to be excellent at messaging, have a strong and well-positioned offer, are excellent at sales, and are excellent at copywriting. They also usually have authority already.
If you’re newer in your business, that’s probably not you yet, and that’s okay. Learning to message, position, write copy, and sell takes years. I’ve spent years and years dialing those skills in and I’m still learning. It’s an ongoing process.
What happened to my own funnels
I’m not saying this from the outside. Across the board, and in my own business, I’ve watched even the people who do this well stop succeeding with automated selling the way they used to. I had to turn off all of my automated evergreen funnels because they weren’t converting, despite my best efforts. Most of what I do now is live. And live selling works, but it needs the list to support it.
So if automation isn’t converting for someone with years of practice, it’s not a great plan for someone who needs a client this month.
Selling Has Always Been About Conversations
Think about how business worked before the internet. A door-to-door salesperson knocks, asks if you’re interested in a vacuum, and moves to the next house. A car salesperson talks to you, follows up with you, and talks to you some more. If you wanted to market your business back then, you’d have gone to events. You would have shaken hands, had conversations, networked, and talked to people.
Sales has always been about relationships. It’s only in the last few years that we’ve had the ability to automate everything and step out of the conversation.
Why DMs feel icky (and why that’s a bad reason to skip them)
It’s funny to me how online, people look at starting a conversation and decide it’s icky and gross. “Ooh, I don’t know if I could do that.”
I get it. Most of us have received the fake, copy and paste “tell me about this” message from a stranger. But there’s a big jump between “some people do DMs badly” and “I refuse to talk to anyone.”
Here’s the choice. You can wait for the email list, the following, and the skills to extract clients from social media or email. Or you can be a human and start talking to people in messages and on calls. I’m not saying go from “your dog is so cute” to “buy my thing,” because that’s weird. Don’t do that. Have a conversation. Be curious. Ask a question.
Where to Find Your First Conversations (When You Have No Audience)
You don’t need to cold message strangers, and you don’t have to. There are usually plenty of people you can talk to already.
Start with your personal network
This is the least sexy and most reliable place to begin. One of the best known names in online business got his first clients by messaging everyone in his personal network and anyone connected to him on Facebook. Then he moved on to his professional network. Only after that did he branch out.
My first client was my friend’s mom. My second was a colleague. My third was my friend’s sister. People like to say that doesn’t count. Of course it counts. Those were my quickest sales, and they put money in my account.
If someone in your life has expressed interest in what you do, or could use your help, that’s a conversation worth having. A friend of a friend, an old college friend, a cousin’s sister. Start there.
Talk to the people already engaging with you
Look at who is commenting on your posts, who is reacting to your stories, and who is already in your DMs. They’ve already raised a hand. Following up with them is not random, and it’s not creepy.
Then go further back. Open your old conversations and look for people you forgot about. I did this myself. I had Claude go through my DMs and look for leads I’d forgotten to follow up with. It found about 20 people. I followed up and generated three sales that week just from that. Three sales, from messages I had already received.
Answer questions in public Facebook groups
Look for public Facebook groups that don’t belong to another coach. Don’t encroach on someone else’s community, because that’s a bad look and a fast way to get banned.
Check the culture of the group, not only the rules. Running a Facebook group is a lot of work, and some people start groups and then abandon them. The rules might say no promotions while everyone clearly promotes. If you can see how people behave and you think you’re okay, you’re probably okay.
Then answer people’s questions in the group with the goal of moving the conversation into the DMs. You’re only reaching out to people who are interested, when it feels right, and when you’ve had a good back and forth. Something as simple as “I have more thoughts on this, I’m sending you a DM” does the job.
Use the boosted post strategy to grow a following
If you’re short on people to talk to, you can build a following on purpose. Pick a post that clearly calls out the person you help and the problem you help them with (a carousel works well for this), and boost it with the goal of profile visits. A small daily budget is enough to test it, and if you’re on an iPhone, boost from instagram.com in your phone’s browser rather than from inside the app so you avoid Apple’s extra fee.
This builds your following, and then you can reach out and welcome the new followers.
Welcome every new follower
This is one of the main ways I start conversations. I welcome every new follower in the DMs. Most people don’t respond. I’d say about 30 to 40% do. It doesn’t say anything about you, it’s just that not everyone wants to chat in DMs, and that’s okay.
But a lot of those welcome messages lead somewhere. They get people on my webinars and into my events, and they start relationships. Keep your first message easy to answer, and end it with a question. A statement closes a conversation. A question keeps it open.
A Real Example: A Launch Four Weeks Away
When someone joins my program, I customize their path based on where they are. Recently, a client came in who was four weeks out from launching her program.
Four weeks isn’t enough time to run ads, build an email list, and warm those people up. It isn’t enough time to grow her following significantly and warm those people up either. So I told her to go hard in the DMs and do DM selling.
She did two things. First, she followed up with people she was already talking to, people who had been engaging with her content. Second, and this was smart, she went into a local Facebook group where the people she could help were hanging out. She posted, followed up, reached out, and moved people into her DMs.
She sold around six spots into her program in a few weeks.
She still plans to build her email list and grow her following, and she should. But in four weeks, with no list and a small following, conversations got her there.
What a Good First Message Looks Like
You don’t need a perfect script. You need a message that sounds like a person wrote it for another person.
- React to something real. A comment they left, a story they posted, something in their bio. Never copy and paste the same “hey, how are you” to 30 people. They can smell it from a mile away.
- Keep the first question easy. “How did you come across my profile?” is a great one. It isn’t personal, it’s simple to answer, and it doubles as market research.
- Always end with a question. “That makes sense!” shuts the conversation down. “How long has that been going on for you?” keeps it moving.
- Go in curious, not attached. If you walk in needing the sale, people feel it. If you walk in wanting to learn, the conversation goes somewhere on its own.
When the conversation gets warm, invite them to a call. Ask if they’re open to one, ask what time zone they’re in, suggest a couple of times, and book it yourself. A conversation is a lot more likely to become a call when you aren’t sending a link.
Follow-Up Is Where the Sale Happens
Sometimes a conversation turns into a sale in a few days. Often it doesn’t, and that’s normal.
That same client came to one of my launches back in the spring and welcomed me in the DMs. She wasn’t ready then, and I think finances were part of it. So I kept following up. I checked in, and checked in again, and checked in again. It took a while, and it ended in a very lucrative sale.
If you only send one message and stop, you’re leaving most of your income on the table. Plan to follow up. A light, friendly check-in is plenty, and you can end it with a question so there’s something easy to reply to. If someone doesn’t answer, that’s information about their timing, not about your worth.
A conversation that started with potty training
Not every conversation needs to begin with your business. I put a story on Instagram asking for potty training advice, because I’m trying to potty train my toddler (it’s going badly, and the diaper fairy was arriving the next day). Dozens of people replied with comments or DMs.
One of those people and I started talking. I wasn’t pitching. I was trying to start a conversation. We went back and forth, and then there was a natural moment to ask about their business. That turned into a longer conversation, and eventually a sale. It took several weeks, not a day. That’s the power of being a human.
A lot of the people who have become my clients started that way, with something that had nothing to do with my business.
Do Conversations Replace Your Email List?
No. DMs are the fast route, not the only route.
Relying on DMs alone forever tends to lead to burnout. And we don’t own social media. If the account gets hacked or banned, you lose access to every one of those people. That’s why you also want your email list growing in the background, as backup insurance. It’s a longer game, and that’s just how it is.
The way to think about it: use conversations to get clients now, and build your list and following alongside so you aren’t starting from zero next time.
“Isn’t That a Lot of Work?”
Yes. It’s a lot of work.
Running your own business is a f***ton of work, even if you never send a single DM. It’s a full-time job. You can start it on the side while you have a full-time job, but it’s still a real job. Nobody who tells you it’s easy is telling the truth, and no job is easy.
For me, working for a boss was way harder than running my own business, even with the online business rollercoaster. I’d take these problems over having a boss any day. But that’s me. The point is to choose your hard. AI can help a lot with the work (it helped me find those forgotten leads), but it isn’t unicorns and rainbows. The work gets less hard in some ways as you go, and then you have more clients, more systems, more money to manage, and more expenses. It’s all hard. Pick the hard you can live with.
How to Make Conversations a Daily Habit
If you want clients and you don’t have the audience yet, you need a daily habit of sales conversations. I do this most days. I won’t pretend it’s every day, because sometimes I have a lot going on, but I try to be in there at least every other day. I start conversations, follow up with leads, and reach out to people. A lot of my clients come through the DMs.
DMs have always been a big part of my business. The original version of my program was all about finding clients through conversations on social media. I drifted away from it because automated selling worked well for me for a while. When that stopped working, I went back to the DMs, and I’ve been rebuilding the skill ever since.
A simple way to start this week:
- Make a list of people you could help. Friends of friends, old colleagues, past connections, anyone who has said something about your topic.
- List who is already engaging. Commenters, people who reply to your stories, and anyone sitting in your DMs.
- Dig through your old conversations. Look for people you forgot to follow up with. You can ask an AI tool to help scan for them.
- Pick one place to find new people. A public Facebook group, or a boosted post that brings new followers in.
- Send messages that end in a question. Make each one specific to the person.
- Follow up. Put a reminder in your calendar and check in with people who go quiet.
- Track what happens. Count the conversations you start, the replies you get, and the calls you book.
Pick a number of conversations you’ll have each day, commit to it, and learn the skill. Yes, “conversating” in DMs is a skill, and it gets better every time.
If You Want Help Doing This Live
I’m running a live bootcamp called From Hey to Paid, built for coaches who need clients now without a big list or a big following. It’s about low pressure, ethical conversations with humans that lead to your next few clients, with tools and training so you can do it well. You get lifetime access to the recordings, and the waitlist gets the lowest price plus a bonus that won’t be offered to the public. You can join the waitlist here.
Be a Human
If you post content and wait for clients to find you, you’ll wait a long time, and it’ll be inconsistent. If you decide to have a set number of conversations a day, follow up, and get better at talking to people, you can get clients faster than you think.
You have two choices: wait until you have the assets, or start talking to people today. The second one is how you create consistency when you don’t have the email list or the content yet.
Leave the podcast a 5-star review: https://ratethispodcast.com/wealthy
