3 Levers That Actually Grow a Coaching Business
Marketing For Fitness Coaches Podcast with Kandace Dickson | CoachRx Podcast Network
A coaching business doesn’t stall because you’re not working hard enough. It stalls because you’re pulling the wrong knob.
If you’re trying to post more, DM more, run more calls, build more stuff, and somehow still not seeing real progress, you don’t need more effort. You need clarity on what’s actually limiting you right now.
In my experience, coaching business growth comes down to three levers: marketing, sales, and delivery. All three matter, but usually one is the constraint. When you don’t know which one it is, you spread your energy across everything, and nothing moves.
The three levers that drive a coaching business (and why one is usually the issue)
Here’s the simple model I use:
Marketing brings the right people to you and warms them up.
Sales turns the right conversations into paid clients.
Delivery keeps clients long-term and builds your reputation.
If even one of these is weak, growth feels fragile. You get stuck in that cycle where you’re always hustling for the next client, always filling the holes, always reacting.
But the goal is to run your business like an engine. You tighten one lever at a time, in the right order, and the whole thing starts to feel more stable.
The mistake I see most often is trying to fix everything at once. Or worse, trying to “market harder” when the real problem is that clients don’t stay. Or improving delivery when you have no leads coming in. The levers work together, but they don’t all need equal attention every week.
Let’s break each one down, including what it’s responsible for, and what it looks like when it’s the bottleneck.
Lever #1: Marketing, getting discovered, building trust, and creating demand
Marketing has one job: attract the right clients and warm them up for a buying conversation (or a direct purchase). It’s a progression. People move from problem aware, to process aware, to ready.
When marketing is working, sales feels lighter. The people who reach out already get what you do, they like how you think, and they’re not starting from zero.
I think of marketing as having three responsibilities.
Build your audience with short-form content
For most coaches, the platform of choice is Instagram. Short-form content is how people discover you: reels, shorts, carousels, stories.
The goal here is reach and relevance.
And the way things work now, your content does the targeting. You don’t “find” your people as much as you speak clearly enough that the right people recognize themselves in your message.
Short-form content is the sneak peek. It shows:
how you think
what you believe
who you’re for (and who you’re not for)
At this stage, I’m not trying to prove everything. I’m trying to create awareness and get the right people to pause.
Build trust with long-form content and your unique perspective
Trust doesn’t usually come from a 12-second reel. Trust comes from time. Long-form content gives someone space to sit with you, hear you explain, and decide if they believe you.
This is where authority building shows up, not in a fake “look at me” way, but in a clear “here’s how I see this problem and how I solve it” way.
Long-form content works because it increases watch time and connection. It helps someone think:
This coach gets it. They see what I’ve been missing. They understand my situation, and I believe they can help me.
This is where I share my methods, how I diagnose problems, what makes my approach different, and how I’ve helped clients work through specific challenges.
Create demand by opening the door to conversation
Marketing isn’t just content. Marketing creates demand, then invites action.
That action can be:
DM conversations (my preference because it keeps people on the platform they already use)
coaching applications
consult requests
This is the point where interest and trust turn into intent. If I’m doing marketing well, I’m not just posting into the void. I’m giving people a clear next step to raise their hand.
To recap, marketing should do three things: build your audience, nurture trust, and create demand by opening the door for conversations.
That’s where marketing ends, and sales begins.
Lever #2: Sales, a simple path to sign up and clean qualification
If marketing does its job, sales should feel like the fun part. Not pressure, not persuasion, not trying to talk someone into something they don’t want.
Sales is a process, and I keep it simple. It has three responsibilities.
Create one clear path to one clear offer
Most coaches don’t have a simple path to sign up. They have five different ways to work together, three prices depending on the day, and a bunch of vague language.
That creates friction.
One clear path to one clear offer lets me optimize. I can get better at:
having conversations
qualifying leads
presenting the offer
building confidence
closing more clients
When everything is scattered, it’s hard to improve because every conversation is different. Clarity helps me repeat what works.
Qualify the lead, it’s about fit, not convincing
Sales is about assessing fit. I’m not for everyone, and I don’t want to work with every client.
I’m building a roster for long-term relationships, so fit matters from the start.
When I’m qualifying, I’m asking:
Are they the kind of client I can help?
Are they ready to work with a coach?
Is my offer the right solution for them?
This takes pressure off. It’s not about convincing. In 2026 and beyond, I’m not trying to persuade someone to value coaching. My marketing should warm up the right people, then sales simply confirms we’re a match.
If I feel that “icky” need to convince someone, I take that as a sign my marketing isn’t doing its job.
Present the offer in a way that’s easy to say yes or no to
A good offer is easy to understand. Confusion creates overwhelm and hesitation. Clarity creates confidence.
Offer presentation doesn’t need to be complicated. I like simple options, like:
an offer doc plus a custom Loom
an offer doc plus a single hero sales video
And I can do that right inside DM. No need to send someone to a website, or spend weeks building pages, especially early on. Simple is easier to improve.
When marketing and sales are both doing their jobs, it should feel like the prospect is walking down a clear hallway. No weird side doors, no guessing what happens next.
Lever #3: Delivery, the part that keeps clients for years
Delivery is the most important lever. It’s what keeps clients long-term, and it’s what turns coaching into a career.
You can have great marketing and sales, but if delivery is weak, your business becomes a leaky bucket. You’re always backfilling. Growth feels fragile.
Delivery has three roles.
Build long-term plans while giving short-term wins
Clients need to know where they’re going. A long-term plan builds confidence because it shows I’m not guessing.
But they also need wins now. Short-term wins build belief, and belief keeps people in the game.
Without both, clients lose patience or lose trust. I want them to feel two things at the same time:
There’s a roadmap.
We’re making progress this week.
Use a repeatable coaching rhythm so it never feels random
My coaching should not feel random. There needs to be a method and cadence to how I:
assess, design, consult, coach, then repeat the cycle until the client hits the goal
Consistency in the client experience builds trust. It also protects my energy. When I have a rhythm, I don’t have to reinvent the wheel for every client.
This is something I go deeper on inside the OPEX Method Mentorship, especially for coaches who don’t yet have a complete, proven method.
Build your method and IP, the thing that makes you hard to replace
Your method and intellectual property is what makes you unique in a crowded market.
It’s not just the workouts. It’s not just nutrition protocols or lifestyle tips. It’s the full process for how you think, how you decide, and how you deliver coaching.
When clients buy into your method, they stay longer. They stop shopping around, because they’re not just paying for workouts, they’re paying for how you solve problems.
If you’re building a one-to-one individual design coaching business and you don’t have a true method yet, that’s a delivery gap worth fixing.
How I diagnose which lever needs attention right now
Once you understand the three levers, the next step is figuring out which one is holding you back today.
I like using a few quick signals.
Marketing is the problem when you don’t control lead flow
Marketing likely needs attention if you rely mostly on referrals, or if new leads aren’t showing up consistently.
Here are the questions I ask:
How are new clients coming to me?
Am I dependent on referrals?
Am I having new conversations (DMs, consults, in person)?
When leads show up, do they understand how I can help them?
Do they understand what makes my coaching unique?
Is it intuitive that we might be the right fit?
If those answers are mostly no, marketing is the constraint.
Sales is the problem when leads show up but you’re not converting
If leads are coming in and they seem like a match, but you’re struggling to convert them, sales needs attention.
That usually means tightening:
your offer
how you communicate it
your qualification process
your offer presentation
When sales is working, you don’t feel like you’re chasing people. You feel like you’re guiding the right people through a simple decision.
Delivery is the problem when clients churn and you keep backfilling
If clients leave too fast, you’re constantly trying to replace them. That’s a delivery issue.
And if delivery is the issue, I fix that first. Always.
Better marketing won’t solve churn, it just brings more people into the same leaky bucket. And more leads won’t help if you can’t convert. Each lever has its moment.
How I run growth sprints without burning out
I like to optimize these levers in sprints. One lever at a time.
That focus matters because:
If I don’t have leads, better delivery won’t grow the business.
If I can’t convert, more leads won’t help.
If clients don’t stay, marketing harder increases churn.
Growth comes from identifying the most critical constraint, then putting my effort there first.
When leads come in consistently, marketing is doing its job. When clients are happy and staying for years, delivery is on point. Most coaches love the delivery side, the actual coaching, so it’s common to ignore marketing and sales until it hurts.
If you want more support, I share marketing and sales on Instagram at @marketingforfitnesscoaches and @mrskandacedickson. I also point coaches toward CoachRx Coaching Software as a delivery operating system, and the CoachRx Podcast Network for more coaching conversations.
Conclusion: Get clear, pick one lever, and tighten it
If your business feels messy, it’s usually because you’re trying to pull all three levers at once. I’d rather get honest about the constraint, then focus.
Marketing brings qualified interest, sales turns that interest into clients, and delivery keeps those clients long-term. When they work together, the business stops feeling fragile and starts feeling sustainable.
If you’re not sure where to start, pick the lever that’s costing you the most momentum right now, then run a sprint on that one thing. Clarity beats effort every time.
Next Steps
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