If you are a seriously overweight, out-of-breath personal trainer or a consultant whose own company is struggling to succeed, you’re probably not going to attract many clients, no matter what you say or do.

Client example: a former client of mine was a fellow business coach helping small businesses. She came to me because she wasn’t attracting ANY clients and was at a loss as to what to do. It quickly became clear to me why this was happening.

She positioned herself as being the one to help you jumpstart your business and grow it to the next level. The problem was HER business was a mess. Her marketing materials were weak, her marketing message was murky, her materials were shoddy, she had old business cards with the phone number crossed off and written in pen, she used a hotmail e-mail address for business instead of a dedicated domain name and her e-mail newsletter was really vague.

It was difficult for me to tell her this, but no one else was telling her, and that’s why she was paying me, so I bit the bullet. (She was glad I did.) I told her that potential clients were probably not working with her because she wasn’t walking her talk. The image she was portraying was not one of a serious business coach who could help people jumpstart their business.

Now, I’ll be the first to admit that this often comes straight from the “cobbler’s kids don’t wear shoes” syndrome. Often we’re so busy working on our clients’ issues; we barely have time to work on our own. (I too have been known to need to carve serious time to work on my own marketing, after-hours, so I’m not throwing stones here.) But in this case, it was extreme and it was keeping this poor business coach from attracting ANY new clients.

We cleaned up her act by having her spend some time on her own business as if she were her own client. We scheduled a set number of hours per week where she would work on cleaning up her act and start walking her talk.

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